


oh, to be young and afraid; darling, the future awaits you

by unchartedandunknown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Full Cast - Freeform, Getting Together, I wore my full clown outfit for this fic so I’m sorry about anything you see in it, M/M, POV Alternating, Swearing, jkr I’m coming to snatch what’s left of your wig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22271941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchartedandunknown/pseuds/unchartedandunknown
Summary: Byleth is prepared to enter his seventh year into Hogwarts with only one solid goal in mind: win the Quidditch Cup.(And maybe pass his NEWTs.)What he doesn’t expect: Quidditch being cancelled, the Triwizard Tournament taking place in Hogwarts his final year, the stream of students arriving from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang to compete for the Cup.And Linhardt von Hevring.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/My Unit | Byleth, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 42
Kudos: 123





	1. what if i put your name in the goblet of fire.....haha jk......unless....??

**Author's Note:**

> \- The Hogwarts in this fic is based off an hp au I’ve been working on/thinking/looking at hcs and posts about since 2016, so if you see some facts that don’t add up dw about it  
> \- The working title of this fic was ‘oh, to be young and afraid and stupid as all fuck’, so go in with that in mind  
> \- I allowed myself one(1) dicc joke in this entire fic  
> \- Ask me in the comments if you have questions

“What do you _mean_ there’s no Quidditch this year?” Sothis smacks the poster into Professor Seteth’s face, a move that should have gotten her detention but instead only grants her the sight of Seteth sighing wearily and pressing two fingers to his temple. Not only is he - as all professors in this school are - forced to adapt to Sothis being...Sothis, he’s clearly been fielding these kinds of questions all day, and Byleth would pity him if his pity hadn’t fled him minutes before being replaced by a knot of anger and confusion as he stands behind Sothis.

“As was mentioned during our announcements at the beginning of the year the night prior,” he says, as if to remind himself that, yes, school in Hogwarts only started _yesterday_ and today is a Sunday and that, yes, they definitely should have tuned in to the evenings’ announcements, “Quidditch has been replaced by the Triwizard Tournament this year.”

“Why can’t we have both of them going off at once?” Sothis is nothing but stubborn. “Think about how much more entertaining it could be! One moment, fighting to the deathー” Seteth’s eye twitches. That saying has been taking a little too seriously in the past, a trait which garnered the Tournament’s reputation for danger, and also the reason why Byleth hadn’t been expecting another Triwizard Tournament anytime soon. The last time a Tournament had taken place, his father hadn’t even been born. “ーand then cheering on our Quidditch teams the next! It can really push some steam off the Tournament.”

Sothis checks the area around them. Byleth follows his gaze. Currently, they’re alone in the corridor leading to the Headmistress’s office. Most of the students are outside soaking up the last of the summer sun, in their common rooms or already holed up in the library, preparing for the first official day of school. There’s no one else around.

“The Quidditch grounds are being used for the Tournament,” he whispers out of the corner of his mouth, and Byleth gets the distinct feeling that they shouldn’t be hearing this. “And that’s really all I can tell you. I shouldn’t be telling you this at _all_.” He meets their gaze, an unspoken promise to speak not of this exchange to anyone else.

Sothis huffs as she stomps back to their common room, the poster featuring the Triwizard Tournament - ‘Compete for a chance to win glory for our school!’, written in bold, blocky letters over a painted pile of glittering gold - crumpled in her tiny fist. The Hufflepuff common room looks like the interior of a beehive, with warm yellow patterned walls and overall homey atmosphere. Helga Hufflepuff appraises them from her place on the mantle above the fireplace as they enter.

“Did you know they’re using the Quidditch grounds for the Tournament this year?” Sothis throws her body onto an empty loveseat, long since designated property of Sothis, with only those with her permission allowed to sit in it.

From his place near the empty fireplace in front of a game of chess, Claude crooks a brow. This isn’t his common room, but with the amount of mingling the student body does, it’s never mattered.

“You can guess that much, considering they wouldn’t cancel Quidditch for no reason.”

So Claude knew all along, guessed it but hadn’t said anything. Byleth takes a seat to watch the chess game, not really to know the outcome - the outcome has become drastically clear over the years - but more to occupy himself.

Ignatz fusses with his hair and groans. “Ugh, okay! Knight to...b7.”

“Queen to d2. Checkmate.” Ignatz’s king throws down his crown. Claude chuckles and shares miniature high fives with his pieces.

Sothis curls up on her loveseat and screams into a pillow.

In the brief silence that follows, Lysithea pulls up a chair after Ignatz’s loss, a glint in her eye. “Let me go next.”

In spite of the news he’s just heard, Byleth relaxes. Their ragtag team has already fallen back into their routine, like they’ve never left.

And it’s just the beginning of the year - their _last_ year - but he’s already feeling nostalgic for the days that trail behind them.

(The days that weren’t spent stressing over exams or his very life, of course.)

“I can’t believe your dad never told us the Triwizard Tournament was happening this year,” Sothis says to Byleth.

“ _Our_ dad.”

“I’m disowning him for not telling us. Remind me again how we didn’t hear that announcement yesterday?”

“You were trying to slingshot a Bertie Bott’s jellybean into Claude’s ear while I kept score of how many times you missed.”

“Hey!”

“Relax. I never got it in.”

“Yeah, I know. I think I’d feel something if you managed to shoot a _jellybean_ into my ear.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Someone make him shut up,” Sothis says for the third time in the past ten minutes. “I can’t deal with this at 7am.”

‘This’ being Lorenz, who is the most wound up Byleth has ever seen him. Lorenz dabs at his watering eyes with a handkerchief, silently accepting another one from Marianne.

On his other side, Hilda comfortingly rubs his shoulder. “There, there,” she says. “It’ll be okay.”

“But it _won’t_ ,” Lorenz says, and Byleth briefly contemplates faking illness to escape this. He’s spent seven years of his life sitting with Lorenz, but if he has to listen to this conversation so early in the morning, he may not last the day. He and his sister share that opinion, at least. “They didn’t say that all club activities would be cancelled along with the Triwizard Tournament.”

“I’m...pretty sure they did, but you were too busy planning for your next play to notice,” Lysithea mutters, quiet enough so that Lorenz doesn’t hear. She’s the only one among them who manages to look put together this morning, silver-and-green striped tie tied perfectly, Head Girl badge cleaned to a shine and pinned on her chest.

Meanwhile, Byleth rolled out of bed and couldn’t be bothered to brush his hair. Ignatz ended up helping him tie his tie when he arrived at breakfast.

“How could no one tell _me_ \- newly appointed president of the drama club - that there wouldn’t _be_ a drama club this year?”

It turns out it wasn’t just Quidditch that was cancelled - so were all other clubs. With all of the professors pitching in to help for the Tournament and none available to supervise their designated clubs, all club activities have been put on hold indefinitely for the year.

“Let’s look on the bright side,” Hilda says.

Lorenz looks up. He somehow manages to look worse than Sothis, who rolled up for breakfast in her heelies with unkempt hair and uniform nowhere to be seen, still in pyjamas. _Maybe it’s the trauma,_ Byleth thinks, all too familiar with the loss he felt yesterday when he discovered the news about Quidditch that fell on him like the weight of a dragon’s clawed foot on his back (and yes, he can actually use that simile because he had the very, _very lucky chance_ to experience it).

“What bright side could there possibly be in this situation?”

“No more rehearsals!” Hilda cheers.

“No more rehearsals...” Lorenz repeats, face chalk-white.

“No more memorizing exhausting lines!”

“No more memorizing exhausting lines...”

“And! No more costume fitting changes!”

Lorenz bursts into tears. Leonie shoots Hilda a look, like, _way to_ go, _dude. You’re gone and done it now. You’ve upset Lorenz Hellman Gloucester, lover of the arts, he of the botched haircuts and one-time wielder of the sword of Godric Gryffindor himself._

Hilda covers her mouth in typical ‘oops!’ fashion and slides awkwardly out of the bench to excuse herself.

“Sorry I’m late, roomie tried to feed Sally again through the window and the common room almost got trashedーwoah.” Claude screeches to a stop behind Lorenz, Head Boy badge jauntily hanging on his head like an accessory, tie hanging from his arm as he buttons up his uniform. “You okay there, bro?”

“Do not ‘bro’ me in my moment of crisis.”

“Sorry, dude.” Claude takes a seat beside Leonie’s rubbing Lorenz’s arms and jerks him thumb to the boy, _what’s his problem?_

“Drama club.” Sothis stabs her egg with a fork and an energy she shouldn’t be capable of manifesting so early in the morning but still manages because her anger is imposed in her tiny, tiny body and can set off at any given moment without warning. This is the cursed life short people live.

“Ah.”

Lysithea crosses her arms, glaring at Claude. “Are you going to look like that all day?”

Claude blinks, accepting a plateful of pancakes from Raphael. “Like what?”

“Likeー” Lysithea gestures to the hair and tie.

“It’s called a fashion statement, sweetie.” He’s clearly joking, but Lysithea fumes, and Byleth imagines a volcano popping off, lava and fire and all. _Here we go._ Because this, too, is routine.

“We’re supposed to be setting an example for the younger students to follow.”

“And I am setting an example.”

“Not a good one.”

“That’s your opinion,” Claude says, but he pries his badge from his hair and pins it to his chest. The tie is hung loose around his neck. “Happy?”

“Never.” She turns to Sothis. “And are you going to wear your uniform anytime soon?”

Sothis chews languidly on her food. Byleth knows better than to think her calm (the only calm she is is the calm before the storm), and rushes out of his seat between the two girls with his plate. Raphael grins and claps him on the back when he sits beside him, and Byleth thanks Merlin for the blessing that is Raphael and his decision to befriend their group back in first year, even if he has no idea of his arm strength and that clap on the back felt more like Byleth got slapped into the table by a troll’s bat.

Ignatz smiles across from him, and only flinches a little when Lysithea’s fork smacks him in the arm as she waves it around.

Leonie perks up suddenly. “Hey, has anyone seen where Hilda went?”

“I thought she went back to the Slytherin table?” Ignatz says uncertainly.

Claude hums, looking at something under the table. “Nah. She’s at the infirmary again. Probably trying to get out of class.” On the first day? A new record for Hilda.

Leonie slaps Claude at what she sees. “Don’t just show that out in the open!”

“What? It’s fine. No one knows how to open this, anyways.” Still, Claude pockets the folded parchment into his robes, but Byleth gets enough of a glimpse to know it was the Marauder’s Map.

“Stop setting a bad example for the students!” It seems Lysithea has stopped fighting with Sothis, because now she’s back to glaring at Claude.

“You were fighting Sothis a few minutes ago, hypocrite.”

Sothis turns to Claude. “She was _trying_ to convince me to wear my uniform, in case you forgot or weren’t listening. And she failed,” she says smugly, “because _I_ was planning on wearing my uniform _regardless_. It’s just in the wash.”

“And _you_ need to stop hogging the Map.” Lysithea points accusingly. “Remember, you didn’t make that alone. I helped.”

“So did I,” Sothis says. “And Byleth.”

“Don’t include me in this,” Byleth mutters.

“How about we work a system? I get the Map for a week, By gets the Map for another week, and you guys get it for one day each.” Claude smiles charmingly.

Lysithea bristles. “That’s not fair!”

Byleth turns to Ignatz before he’s forced to hear the rest of it. “Class?”

“Huh? Oh, sure!” Ignatz scrambles to clean his plate as Byleth waits. The rest of the group is lost in their own conversations, not noticing when Byleth tugs on Marianne’s sleeves to take her away from the group. She waves a small goodbye. Leonie and Raphael are the only ones who wave back.

Ignatz tightens his bronze-and-blue tie as Marianne falls into step next to them. “Do we all have Care of Magical Creatures on Monday mornings?”

“Just us?” Byleth says.

“I hope they all get along without us...” Ignatz pauses. “Though, we’ve been friends since first year, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Byleth nods. No matter how much their friends fight, it’s done in a familiar, joking way, in a pattern that Byleth can predict without even thinking about it at this point.

The morning fog has lifted over the ground, sun warming the grass they walk across. Marianne spins in a circle, laughing silently, the light catching in her blue hair. Byleth physically forces his tear ducts closed. Beside him Ignatz has clearly failed, from what he can tell from the muffled sniffling behind Ignatz’s sleeve.

“Still, it is a shame,” Ignatz says when they arrive - Byleth checks his schedule once more - to the front of Professor Alois’s hut. “Lorenz was really looking forward to it.”

Byleth hums in agreement. He can still remember the first play he saw at Hogwarts - it wasn’t so much seeing as living the experience as Peter Pan and Wendy and her brothers flew over their heads with magic and danced on air, the grandness of Captain Hook’s pirate ship that loomed over the stage, the bittersweet farewell with Peter as Wendy aged.

The fact that Lorenz won’t get to perform his last play on his seventh yearーByleth can imagine how that feels. He and Sothis were looking forward to leading the Hufflepuff Quidditch tryouts this year, after all, and defend their Cup that they managed to wrest from the Slytherin’s grasp last year.

“Who knows,” Byleth says, surprising Ignatz and Marianne, both of whom were cooing at a sparrow in the distance. “Maybe something good will come from this Tournament.”

Marianne smiles, a shy, small thing. “I hope so.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Linhardt flops onto the bed. He is 1) tired, 2) tired, and 3) downright exhausted. Did he forget to mention: tired? He can feel his bones melting so that he becomes one with the bed, skin and all. Linhardt wishes he was a bed. Then he would be soft and no one would have any expectations of him and he could be left in peace and not have to go to _class_.

Someone bounces onto the bed beside him, and Linhardt knows who it is without looking, can tell by the pressure on his side alone.

“It’s not gonna be that bad, Linny,” Caspar says. The bed creaks as he leans back.

“It’s terrible.” Linhardt’s words are muffled by the fact that he’s speaking into the mattress. “They want meーand you!ーand me to go on that ship to _Hogwarts_.”

Linhardt doesn’t know what the Headmistress was thinking when they were called up to her office this morning. They need a group of students who will be representing Durmstrang, she said, to come along and potentially participate in the Triwizard Tournament.

He’s seen the list of students part of the departing group. He can understand Edelgard or Petra representing their school. He can even understand, if he tilts his head, Caspar and Ferdinand coming along.

But Linhardt? Linhardt ditches-class-to-research-in-the-library von Hevring? Linhardt fell-asleep-and-bungled-his-Transfiguration-exam? _Von Hevring?_

He’s not Champion material. Anyone with two working eyes and at least one brain cell left can see that.

“You’re acting like Bernie.”

“She’s rubbing off on me, then. You know, she was just complaining to me about that this afternoon while we were painting our nails. Says she doesn’t know why Edelgard would choose her to come along.”

“She thinks _Edelgard_ chooses who gets to go?”

“Who can blame her? I’d be confused, too, looking at the list.” Linhardt lifts up his head to find Caspar staring back at him, leaning on one arm on his side, head perched on fist.

“The Headmistress chooses model students.”

“I’m not a model student, though.”

Caspar shrugs. “You’re smart.”

“But you’re not smart _or_ a model student, so I don’t see how come you’re coming along. Linhardt’s joking, of course. Caspar’s hardworking, intuitive with magic in a way others aren’t.

“Moral support?” Caspar jokes.

At this moment, Linhardt wishes he was back in his home’s library, trapped in the piles of books and origami that he charmed to fly around him like his buzzing thoughts.

He most certainly doesn’t want to go any further than home, let alone Durmstrang.

“At least you want to go,” Linhardt says, tugging a pillow to rest his chin on. “What did you want to go to Hogwarts for, anyway?”

Caspar’s eyes glimmer. “They have a _giant_ squid in their lake and a bunch of creatures in their school’s forest, is what they say. And,” he adds, “they have students.”

“I would expect a school to have students, yes.”

“Students whose wands you haven’t studied.”

_“...Oh.”_

Linhardt has had a fascination with wands since he was young. His family was never in the business of making them, but his grandmother was, and Linhardt still remembers the time he spent in her corner shop as she unveiled wand after wand, showing the inner workings and wand cores, the carvings and patterns and effort she put into each one.

Since then he’s studied every wand he’s come across, from Caspar’s to Edelgard’s to the Headmistress of Durmstrang herself.

Caspar grins, recognizing the look in Linhardt’s eyes. He nudges him with his shoulder. “I told you we’d have fun.”

“I won’t know until I’ve been there.” He means it as a warning, but Caspar’s ever the optimist.

“That’s the spirit, Linny. Now, c’mon, I wanna see if I can stick Ferdie’s coat to him again.”

Linhardt sighs, but rolls off the bed gracelessly to the ground as Caspar hops off. “There’s no way a sticking charm will work on him twice...”

“Not unless we have a distraction.”

“You’re talking about me, aren’t you.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Lost Belongings_

Has anyone lost their copy of Hamlet? I found it on the first floor stairwell. - Byleth

\- That was mine. Feel free to throw it out, burn it, or use it in a sacrificial demon ritual. - Lorenz

>> I would like to use it in my next sacrificial demon ritual! Please meet me at the front of the library after class. - Flayn

>> Flayn. We talked about this. Ten points from Ravenclaw. - Professor Seteth

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The night is frigid. It clings to Byleth’s clothes, chases him as he speeds down the pitch and pulls up his broom, his shadow cast on the ground.

It’s not a full moon tonight, thankfully. That was last week, and now Marianne is safe in her dorm room, under warms covers and deep in sleep, Byleth hopes.

There is something about seeing the Quidditch pitch quiet in the dark. The stands are empty where Byleth can imagine a roaring crowd, Flayn’s announcer voice booming, _“And there we have it...the game ends at 250-140, with Hufflepuff in possession of the snitch! Can I get a round of applause for both teams who gave us this breathtaking game today!”_

The Quidditch Cup was warm in his hands, and he felt like sunshine had been transferred from the Cup into his hands and heart and cheeks. His teammates were a clustered mess around him when they landed, some sobbing, some yelling themselves hoarse, some a blubbering combination of both.

The cheers fade to a ringing noise in his ears.

He opens his eyes to see past the fog of his exhale a shadow on the Quidditch pitch who flies up to meet him.

Sothis is quiet. It makes him uneasy sometimes, how quiet she can be when she wants to be. Her presence is loud, but if she wants she can make herself invisible. It’s how she managed to steal to Quaffle from their opponents, repeatedly.

“We can play another day,” she says, flippant yet not in a way only she can, and Byleth nods, knows what she means.

Knows it won’t be the same.

They circle the pitch, racing each other, and Byleth pretends they are five again, when their brooms didn’t let them fly high enough and their shoes were stained from rushing through wild green grass.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students arrive today, and following their entrance is the unveiling of how the Tournament Champions will be decided.

But that doesn’t matter, because according to Hilda nothing matters when she’s suffering.

“Kill me,” she says, buried under the books and papers that are so large she has her own space on the dining table.

“Maybe later,” Sothis says. Byleth sees her visibly liking a post about procrastinating on her phone. To this day, Byleth has never seen her crack open a school book. The last time he saw her reading anything it was Geronimo Stilton and they were ten. He doesn’t know how she’s passing her classes.

And the fact that it’s _Hilda_ of all people buried under work is a strange sight, especially so early in the year. Byleth can only suspect that either her building workload has already caught up to her, or her brother’s been harping on her in his letters.

Marianne fidgets with her tie. “I’m not sure if you’re supposed to be here,” she murmurs.

Hilda frowns. “What do you mean?”

“If they’re coming, then that means the Headmistress will want you at your table.” Marianne clears her throat politely when Hilda continues to stare at her in confusion. “The Slytherin table.”

“Oh, shit.” Hilda scrambles to gather up her belongings. Byleth flicks his wand and sends her belongings soaring over the heads of students to her usual place beside Lysithea. “Thanks, By.”

Claude salutes him from where he’s sitting near the head of the table, eyes twinkling.

Sothis keeps showing Byleth bad memes. All he’s thinking about is the Potions essay he hasn’t started yet, so he asks Marianne if she’s started.

She pulls at a loose strand of hair. “I’m almost done,” she says, looking away, and Byleth can’t tell if she’s lying.

“I haven’t started,” Sothis declares, to the surprise of no one.

Over at the professors’ table, Jeralt’s razor-sharp hearing picks out Sothis’ voice like a needle in a haystack, and Byleth fights a sigh.

“He heard you,” he says, but a hush falls. It travels from the back to the front of the room, and Byleth doesn’t know what’s happening, only that anticipation is running under his skin.

A chair falls; a student cries, “Look outside!”

To the rising clamour and crowd gathering at one side of the great hall’s windows, Byleth stands and cranes his neck to see a ship rising out of the lake. The sails shake and the ship bobs as it fully surfaces, and he’s reminded of a dog shaking water off its fur.

The ship looks ancient but well-crafted, with a dragon at its head, carved from what looks like cracked black marble. Byleth doesn’t understand how it got inside the _lake_.

“Up there!”

Byleth follows the pointing students to...a house?

It looks like a large blue house in the air, flown in byー

“Pegasi,” Marianne murmurs in awe.

The pegasi draw the carriage - house? - in pairs, twenty in total. Their wings glimmer. Byleth thinks he sees sparkles literally flake off every time their wings flap.

“I’m not usually the one who says this, but is anyone else confused that they might have breached the Statute of Wizarding Secrecy?” Sothis says to no one in particular.

The students settle back in their seats, but this time there’s suspense in the air, palpable.

The Durmstrang students are the first to arrive. They wear crimson coats with furred hoods and wool hats, and Byleth can’t tell much from their features other than that, but they feel cold in a way that is physical, can taste it on the tip of his tongue.

There is one girl who walks upright, back straight, leading the group like she is walking to her executionーor to battle. (Is there a difference?) Her hair the colour of ivory, of the ribs of a carcass picked clean by magpies and left to bake in the dry heat on the side of the road.

The colour mirrored in Lysithea’s own hair.

Byleth and Sothis exchange looks. Marianne is pale, pale as curdled milk.

At the Slytherin’s table, Hilda grabs hold of Lysithea’s hand. Lysithea who has gone still, eyes wide.

Everyone has heard tales about the corruption within the Ministry of Magic, the rumours of Those Who Slither in the Dark who performed experiments on the children within their grasp to try and understand the limits - or, limitlessness - of magic. Lysithea is is one of those children, the only one who lived among her siblings. Though, that’s only something her close friends know.

(Those Who Slither in the Dark have long been captured and sentenced to their crimes, and they will stay in Azkaban until death.)

And perhaps that girl...

But, no. He can’t make any assumptions based off of hair colour alone. Besides... his gaze travels to Lysithea. This isn’t his secret to divulge.

 _Edelgard von Hresvelg._ The whisper travels between the students like wind between trees. Edelgard surely hears them but her gaze remains fixed forward, steady.

The Headmistress of Durmstrang - a woman with long, flowing dark blue robes that seems to have a life of its own and a tilted witch hat that shadows her face - and Headmistress Rhea exchange words of formality. The Durmstrang students sit at the Gryffindor table, where the Gryffindors lean forward and welcome them.

The delegates from Beauxbatons arrive in a whirl of blue and smelling like earth after a thunderstrike. They look like a wave, rolling to crash on sand, frothing, ready.

Their Headmistress has fierce eyes that hold thunderclouds. Her robes look like they’re cut from marble.

She has her own exchange with their Headmistress that seems much less stiff, with the Beauxbatons Headmistress stooping to place a kiss on Rhea’s hand.

Across the room, Claude does the same with a Beauxbatons boy, and Byleth has to do a double take.

Byleth can only see the boy’s stiff back from here and Claude’s smile, but Hilda’s jaw has dropped and Lysithea’s rolling her eyes so hard they threaten to fall out of their sockets.

A murmur runs through the student body. Byleth catches whispers of _“He’s here,”_ and _“Who would’ve thought?”_

“Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd,” Marianne murmurs.

“The Boar Prince,” Sothis says, quiet enough for only Byleth to catch.

 _It was a bloodbath._ That’s what Byleth remembers his father telling him when it happened. An attack on the family in their own estate. Dimitri’s mother had already passed away before the attack, but afterward there was no one left alive but Dimitri, who had watched his family die at ten years old.

“They say his mother was half-Veela,” Sothis says, as if to brush away this fact.

The Beauxbatons students end up sitting at the Slytherin table, and dinner commences. The food appears down the table in rows. The sound of chatter and clinking of tableware, the smell of food fills the air.

Byleth grabs the plate of chicken Sothis was reaching for. She shoots him a glare, and he shrugs.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Hogwarts is different than Linhardt had anticipated.

“The ceiling’s charmed, yes?”

Through a mouthful of food, Leonie manages, “Yeah.”

“And how long is the charm kept up?”

“Uh...” She shrugs. “It just always looks like that?”

Caspar leans forward. “You guys have ghosts, right?”

“You mean like Sir Nick?” Raphael points to the ghost that floats past with a polite wave.

“So cool...” Caspar has stars in his eyes.

“You guys don’t have ghosts in Durmstrang?”

“Of course not. No ghost would want to stay in our school.” That goes without saying.

“...Huh,” Raphael says. “Who are you, again?”

“I am Ferdinand von Aegir!”

Edelgard has been staring at the girl at the Slytherin table since they sat down, the one with the white hair.

And Linhardt may not know much about Edelgard, given how secretive she can be about some parts of her past, but there’s no way that white hair can be a coincidence.

Hubert clears his throat. “Bernadetta, would youー”

“Yes!” she yelps, passing the mashed potatoes to him. She’s been on edge since they’ve left the ship. No, since before that. Probably when she had to leave her room.

“Manuela teaches here, doesn’t she?” Dorothea says from beside Bernadetta.

Leonie nods. “She teaches Charms...do you know her?”

“She was a songstress in the opera company I used to volunteer at when I was younger.”

“Oh. Now that I think about it, she’s in charge of the drama club, so I guess it kind of makes sense that she used to be in the opera.”

“The drama club!” Dorothea claps her hands excitedly. “You guys have your own theatre for your plays, right?”

“Yeah.”

“But how did you manage to fit a theatre inside Hogwarts?” Linhardt asks. “From what I’ve read, there’s never any mention of Hogwarts having a theatre - at least, not when it was built by the four founders.” And why would it? In the century Hogwarts was built, the founders were more worried about being burned at the stake and creating a safe space for wizards to grow and study in, not extracurriculars.

Wizards are lucky to be where they are now.

The other Gryffindor boy jumps in. Linhardt can’t remember his name, but his bangs were cut terribly and he has a rose pinned to his uniform. “Plumbing in Hogwarts wasn’t added until later on as well by a wizard. From what we can tell, Hogwarts tries to accommodate its students.”

“Hogwarts?”

“It’s not something I can explain well, but I’ll try. I’m not sure how it works at Beauxbatons or Durmstrang,” he waves a hand to them, “but Hogwarts is made of magic.”

“Of course,” Petra says. “I think all buildings housing wizards have some kind of magic that builds up over time.”

“Yes, but. Let’s just say that Hogwarts is...sentient.”

“You mean, with feelings?”

Leonie shrugs. “It’s not something we think about that much,” she says, which is one way to be casual about the possibly-sentient building you live in year-round. “Hogwarts follows the needs of its students, and eventually enough students wanted a theatre, I guess, and one day it justーpopped one out.”

“But if you want more information, you can ask Cyril,” Raphael says.

“Who?”

“He’s the kid at the Slytherin table sitting next to Lysitheaーthat’s the girl with the white hair. He got adopted when he was found by the Headmistress as an orphan, and he was raised in Hogwarts. If there’s anyone who knows how Hogwarts works, it’ll be him.”

Durmstrang is different from Hogwarts. In Durmstrang, the lights were always dimmed, and fires were rarely used.

Now, he sheds his coat, overheated. The stars twinkle above them, and he’s not sure if he likes the change or not.

Headmistress Rhea calls for attention nearing the end of dinner.

“It is time to unveil the impartial judge that will be selecting the Champions from each school.” She gestures toward a side door, which opens to a professor who wheels in a box at the front of the hall.

“What do you think is in there?” Linhardt whispers.

Caspar frowns. “A rat? Or, no...a cat. Cats like boxes, right?”

“I don’t think she’d get a cat or a rat to decide who the Champions will be,” Ferdinand says. “Maybe a raven, or an owl. Orーa tiny dragon.”

“Aren’t wizards banned from breeding dragons?”

“Breeding. That doesn’t stop a dragon from judging the Triwizard Tournament.”

Leonie looks at Dorothea. “Is this how they always talk?”

“If they’re not high.”

Petra shushes them as the Headmistress taps on the box. Necks crane as she lifts something out of the box and places it on a stand. It’s...

“A cup,” Caspar says, disappointed.

“The Goblet of Fire.” Rhea’s voice echoes across the hall. “Anyone who wishes for a chance to compete as a Champion must write their name and school on a slip of parchment and drop it in the Goblet. The Goblet will be placed in the Entrance Hall, and in three days’ time, on Halloween night, we will wait to see its decision.

“And,” she says, “to discourage anyone who is not over the age of sixteen from participating, an Age Line will be cast around the Goblet.

“The Triwizard Tournament is not something that can be taken lightly,” she continues once the bursts of furious whispers have finally subsided. “Once a Champion has been selected, they are obligated to follow through the Tournament due to the binding magical contract that comes with putting your name in the Goblet of Fire. Make sure that your heart is steady when you make your decision, no matter what it is. Now, I will bid you all a good night. After all, there is still class tomorrow.”

The students groan and shuffle their feet but make their way out of the hall. Their Headmistress, Shamir, beckons to them from the end of the hall.

“Thank you for inviting us to your table,” Edelgard says.

“It’s no problem!” Raphael says. “You guys are free to sit at whatever table you want. We’ll be at the Hufflepuff table tomorrow.”

“Do you guys have a place to sleep?” Leonie asks.

Linhardt nods. “Our ship will be at the lake.”

“If there’s anything you need, just ask.”

“The wifi password,” Bernadetta murmurs, but shakes her head when Leonie glances at her. Linhardt repeats the question.

“Oh, of course.”

“I hope you sleep well,” the last Gryffindor says - _Lorenz_ , Linhardt finally remembers.

Bernadetta clutches the edge of Linhardt’s coat as Caspar tugs them all forward. He looks back at the Slytherin table, but Lysithea - that was her name, if he remembers it correctly - is gone.

The Goblet glimmers dimly, waiting to be brought outside.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Riiight. And you expect us to believe you when you say you guys were ‘childhood friends’,” Hilda air-quotes. She slumps back in the couch, the papers before her fluttering at the movement.

Beside her, Claude picks up one of the papers that weren’t stuck under a book and fell to the floor.

“We are?” he says, smoothing out the paper and placing it back on the table. “We lived near each other, but I moved away and we lost contact for a few years.”

“Mhmm,” Hilda says in that tone of voice she’s been using for the past half hour, that _I hear what you’re saying but I don’t believe you_ tone. “Is that why you kissed his hand after so long not seeing each other?”

“Damn, Hilda, can’t I flirt with whoever I want?”

“Aha!” She points triumphantly. “So you admit it! You were flirting!”

“I wanted to see if I could fluster him. Didn’t work that well, though.”

“Do you like him?”

“We were kids.”

“I’m asking in present tense.”

Claude shrugs with a smile. Hilda shoots Byleth a pleading glance. He looks away. _None of my business._

“Are you guys gonna submit your names to the Goblet?” Flayn asks, splayed on the floor, book lying open but unread beside her.

“I know I am,” Leonie says. “And Claude, you’re gonna try as well, right?”

“I don’t know,” Claude says after a moment, leaning back on the couch. “I’m not sure if I want to be representing Hogwarts.”

“Can’t handle the workload?” Leonie teases. “Nothing wrong with that, though. You’re Head Boy this year, and on top of that we have our NEWTs.”

Sothis yawns. “I think Byleth should try it. The Goblet.”

Byleth looks at her. She stares back, catlike.

Claude hums. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”

Lysithea looks up from her work for the first time since they arrived at the Hufflepuff common room. “I’m not so sure about that.” She glares at Byleth. “He looks like an airhead.”

“Are you offering yourself up, then?”

She scoffs. “I’m too busy for that. But if I had to choose between Claude or Byleth to represent Hogwarts, I’d choose Leonie.”

“Aw, thanks!”

“What about you, Hilda?” Claude turns to her. “Did your brother send any letter begging you to participate?”

“Ugh! No, thank Merlin. I don’t wanna go through any of the trials they have planned.”

“So from our group, the people who would be submitting their names would be me, Raphael, Lorenz, Byleth, and _maybe_ Claude?” Leonie counts on her fingers. “What about you, Flayn? Sothis?”

“Seteth won’t let me.”

“Pass,” Sothis says, hanging upside down from her loveseat.

“And Ignatz and Marianne both said they weren’t planning on doing it in the first place.” Near the window, the two in question look up from feeding Marianne’s rabbit. Ignatz bobs his head. “So that leaves...five of us?”

“Imagine if someone outside our group gets chosen,” Hilda says. “Wouldn’t that be funny?”

“Almost as funny as the fact that you still haven’t finished your essay for Ancient Runes and it’s almost past midnight,” Claude says. She pouts.

“Hold on,” Byleth says. “I didn’t say I was participating.”

Leonie blinks. “So you don’t want a chance to go into the Tournament, then?”

“I...”

He;s not sure. With Quidditch gone, he doesn’t have anything to do. He was never in any other clubs like the some of the others were, and even those were cancelled this year.

But maybe that’s a good thing? Like Leonie said, they have NEWTs to study for. And Byleth still needs to figure out what he wants to do after he graduates.

Or he could die in the Tournament and not have to worry about it.

Sothis rolls her eyes. “Do I have to do everything around here?” She stands up.

“Where are you going?”

“To bed. It’s late.”

“She has a point. We should go back to our dorms.” Claude stretches. Hilda looks alarmed.

“I’m not doneー”

“I’ll help you when we get to our common room. C’mon. ‘Night, guys.”

Slowly, Byleth’s friends traipse out the room. Marianne quietly waves and beelines for her room, leaving Byleth alone, surrounded by plants.

He feels a small tug, looking out the small circular window to the cloudless sky and whirling stars, to feel the wind in his hair, cool wind drying the sweat on the back of his neck.

Instead, he turns and prepares for bed.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“You’ll be learning alongside Hogwarts and Beauxbatons students while you’re here,” Headmistress Shamir says. “I want you all to show the utmost respect to your fellow classmates. Am I clear?”

A mumbled agreement. A nod. Linhardt rests his head on Caspar’s shoulder, trying to return to his dream of flying fish.

Shamir claps sharply, and the fish disappear with a pop. “Get dress. I’ll see you in the Great Hall in ten minutes.” The unsaid _or else_ hangs in the air after she leaves, which bolsters their group to scramble for their uniforms.

“Do we really have to wear these fur coats?” Dorothea’s voice echoes down the hall. “Hogwarts is warmer than I thought it would be.”

Edelgard’s voice travels back from her room. “I would bring it, just in case.”

“Or I can just use a warming charm if I ever get cold.” Her door slams open. “Our uniforms are a little cute now that I get to see them without the coat.”

Their uniform is a simple red that’s the same colour as their coats with ebony buttons. Dorothea wears black tights and knee high boots, along with the hat she always wears.

And it does look cute. On Dorothea.

Linhardt emerges from his room, and her lips twitch.

“I know,” he sighs. “I look like a tomato.”

“Yeah,” she admits and bursts out laughing, honest enough for Linhardt to almost take offence if he cared.

Caspar takes one look and chokes. “It’s the hair.”

“It’s the _uniform_. And I’m not dyeing my hair just because I look like this.”

“You’ve dyed your eyebrows before, this is just the next step.”

Dorothea snorts. Linhardt frowns. They probably still have pictures of that time when he was thirteen and his eyebrows were pink.

“At least I never shaved my eyebrows off.”

“Hey, it was a dare!”

“And you still shaved them off. Can we go?” Linhardt yawns. “I want to sleep after breakfast.”

“Yes, but hang on.” Dorothea runs to her room, only to return with her bag. “Okay, let’s go. Edie?”

Edelgard’s waiting for the rest of them at the end of the hall with the others. Along the way to the Entrance Hall she hands out strips of paper along the way.

“What’s this for?” Bernadetta asks.

“The Goblet,” she says, and Linhardt remembers why they were at Hogwarts in the first place.

“We can stop by on the way to the Great Hall,” Petra says.

It’s less dramatic than Linhardt expects. When they arrive it’s to find a few students lingering around the Age Line. The Goblet of Fire sits on its stand.

Edelgard squares her shoulders.

When she drops the paper inside, the Goblet blasts out an indigo fire that disappears just as quickly as it appeared.

Caspar and Bernadetta use Linhardt’s back to write their names as he struggles to stay awake with Ferdinand holding him up. Caspar ends up writing his name for him.

The fire licks at Linhardt’s hand but doesn’t touch it. His paper goes up in flames, consumed and turned to ash.

The Great Hall is moderately busy but less filled than Linhardt thought it would be. Raphael waves at them from their group, and Caspar waves back, asking, “Should we sit with them?”

“Maybe at lunch.” Edelgard finds them an empty spot on the Gryffindor table. At Durmstrang they don’t usually share meals together, but here in a new school, Linhardt feels comfortable seeing familiar faces near him. “Or, I don’t know. You don’t have to sit with me.”

“Nah, we love you, Edie,” Dorothea says, taking a seat beside her.

As they begin to eat breakfast, Caspar asks, “Does anyone know how we’re supposed to get to the classrooms they put on this schedule? They didn’t exactly give us a map to find our way around.”

“Maybe a _‘point me’_ will work,” Bernadetta says.

Linhardt yawns. “We’ll just have to find out ourselves, hm?”

A _‘point me’_ does not, in fact, work, the Durmstrang students soon find out. That is because the Hogwarts castle is designed to make no sense to anyone but their teachers and students; doors open to walls, some doors you have to answer a riddle to get through, the moving staircases are alwaysーwell, moving, sometimes the people in the paintings lie or give them a roundabout route to their destination, and Linhardt is just trying to get to his History of Magic class in one piece.

Only to find a ghost teaching the class.

Needless to say, he sleeps through the entire period, despite the fact that Edelgard glares at him and reminds him afterward like Headmistress Shamir, again, that they are the example of their school, blah blah blah, and Linhardt can’t remember the rest because he was asleep.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Advice Column_

Does anyone know how to get around this school? - Lost Beauxbatons student

\- Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. - Claude

\- In our first year at Hogwarts no one bothered to give us a map. You have to find your way around yourself. - Sothis

\- The professors are used to it after dealing with new first years every year. Your best bet for a guide would be Cyril, but he has his own classes so you’ll have to ask him. - Byleth

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“I heard you were late to your first class today,” Jeralt says.

His father isn’t one for tea, but he always has some aside whenever they visit. Despite the fact that he’s a professor in Hogwarts and teaches one of their classes, they rarely have time to visit outside of class.

His office is connected to his classroom for Defence Against the Dark Arts. There’s a closet in the corner of the room that rattles ominously that Byleth can only guess is for his third year class. A hummingbird hovers in a painting.

Sothis’ coral pink corn snake is wrapped around her arm, moving hypnotically as it watches the hummingbird, tongue flicking. When she first got it at thirteen, she named the snake Thanatos, but now she settles for calling her Kiki, a change that relieved Byleth almost as much as their father.

“I didn’t get to eat breakfast,” Byleth says, taking a sip from his cup.

“Why is Kiki telling me you’ve been drinking too much coffee?”

Jeralt chokes. Byleth sighs. Their father always did forget Sothis’ unique ability to talk to snakes. Parseltongue isn’t common among most wizards, after all.

Kiki has to be kept in Jeralt’s room most of the time. With Marianne’s rabbit occupying their dorm, they don’t know how that situation would pan out.

“Is it the Triwizard Tournament?” Sothis asks. “Do they want you to do something for it?”

Jeralt scratches his beard. For the past two months now, Sothis has been trying to glean any information she can from their father. Predictably, it hasn’t been working. Their father is a tight-lipped man. Byleth doesn’t even know how old he is, and the information he _does_ have on him is information given to him by different people.

Like the fact that Jeralt used to work as an auror in the Ministry before disappearing for years. Presumably, that’s around the time Byleth was born and he took in Sothis.

“You’ll know it when they announce it,” Jeralt says, dodgy as ever, even to his children.

Sothis sticks out her tongue and stomps out of the room, Kiki still wrapped around her arm. She leaves the door open, which makes Jeralt sigh and Byleth push it closed.

“Did you need something, kid?”

Byleth stares at his father grading a stack of essays with a frown, and tries to imagine him as an auror. The image isn’t difficult to bring up; Jeralt has an intimidating aura, and he walks like he’s seen all the world has to offer and decided it wasn’t worth his time.

“How did you know what to do when you graduated Hogwarts?”

Because here’s another thing he only found out when Jeralt got the job as the new professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts: he studied at Hogwarts.

“I didn’t. Surprised?” he says, at the look on Byleth’s face. “People told me I would be good as an auror, so that’s what I did. Then I saw how the Ministry worked...decided it didn’t suit me, so I left. Settled down in a small town.” He huffs. “One thing led to another, and now we’re here.”

Byleth nods mutely. The details are vague, as is everything about his father’s past, and it feels like it happened to another person, another family.

And he may not know much about his father, but he knows Jeralt’s choices are influenced by his children. There’s a reason why he took the job at Hogwarts, and the reason was Byleth and Sothis.

Their father has never been affectionate, but his love shows in different ways, everyday.

“You don’t know what you’re going to do after you graduate.” Byleth shakes his head. “I don’t expect you to. You’re seventeen. I think I’d be more surprised if you had a plan at all.” He shakes his head. “You do whatever things kids your age do. Goof off, studying, whatever you want. Just don’t tell me you regret any of it.”

“I won’t,” he says, throat tight with an undeniable emotion.

His father’s smile is small but warm, and it encompasses a million emotions that can’t be described or said but can be shared by a look alone.

In the picture framed on his table, a mini-Byleth and Sothis stare back at them, swinging their legs over a bench, carefree and unknowing.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Wait! Just hear me out!” Linhardt calls, but the girl is already gone, turned around the corner and out of sight. He sighs. “I messed up.”

Caspar sees the look on his face when he returns to Durmstrang’s ship. “What did you do this time?”

“I think I came on too hard to a girl.”

“You...what?” Caspar’s burst of laughter is short and surprised.

Linhardt runs a hand through his hair, trying to figure out where he went wrong.

He thinks maybe the trouble all started when he sat beside her in Arithmancy.

 _Hi, I’m Linhardt,_ he said, in a full sentence, because maybe Edelgard’s lectures had finally done something to make him moderately polite.

The girl looked instantly scared to see him. Not a completely unfounded reaction - Durmstrang’s reputation precedes its students, and it’s only recently that their newest Headmistress has turned over a new leaf with the abolishment of teachings of the Dark Arts in their school, a choice which gained both the admiration and vitriol of wizarding families alike.

The girl had a bronze-and-yellow striped tie, which meant she was from Hufflepuff. She had blue hair braided back, and three scars on her face, like a claw that had reached out to caress; one stretched from above her right eyebrow to the bottom of her left cheek, another that wrapped from her ear to over the bridge of her nose, and the last from cheek to mouth.

She was also, unfortunately, the first student Linhardt had tried to befriend at Hogwarts.

“Let me guess,” Dorothea says. “You tried to ask to see her wand, she got spooked and ran.”

“Essentially. Do I look intimidating? I don’t think I look intimidating.”

“You’re not. But sometimes you just get that look.” Dorothea sighs when Linhardt only quirks a brow. “It’s like you’re...well, looking at a lab rat.”

“I don’t mean for it to happen, it just...does.”

“Yeah, we know that, Lin. But others don’t, so they freak out a little.”

Caspar swings an arm around Linhardt’s shoulder, an awkward feat with his height. “It’s alright. I’m sure you’ll get another person in no time. Now, let’s go!”

“Go where?” Linhardt stumbles, Caspar’s arm still hooked around his neck.

“The only reason why I’m here, of course! To the forest!”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Caspar hasn’t stopped pouting. He’s skipping stones on the lake, and he’s had enough practice that they travel far. Linhardt watches one skip across the still surface nine times before sinking with a plop.

“I don’t know what you expected,” he says. “It’s called the Forbidden Forest for a reason.”

“Still,” Caspar says, throwing the last stone in his hand. It sinks with a ker- _plunk_ after eight skips. He casts about for more rocks. “I didn’t think anyone would try to stop us.”

It was Professor Alois - the professor for Care of Magical Creatures - who found them lingering as the edge of the forest. Before they could get in, they were shooed away.

“These woods are dangerous. Plenty of kids have run in and barely made it out,” he said. “Why, Claude and his group wouldn’t have survived second year if it weren’t for that Ford Angelica...and Flayn wouldn’t have made it if she weren’t on a dragon. Go on, now. I have to feed the pegasi before Catherine finds me.”

“And it’s not like we wouldn’t have survived,” Caspar continues. “If a bunch of twelve-year-olds can survive the Forbidden Forest, I’m pretty sure I can make it through.”

“The Forbidden Forest?” a voice says from behind them. “I wouldn’t go there if I were you.”

Raphael stands behind them with a plateful of pumpkin pie. He approaches the edge of the lake to stand with them, wrapped in a winter coat.

“If the Forbidden Forest is as dangerous as they say, why is it next to a wizard school?” Linhardt asks.

“The centaurs are territorial,” Raphael says. Holding the plate like a frisbee, he snaps his arm out so the pumpkin pie goes flying into the lake. “They were were before Hogwarts was made. As long as they don’t see you in the forest, they’re alright. There’s plenty of dangerous stuff in the Forbidden Forest that the centaurs try and keep in line. But it’s also got plenty of creatures that we study in Care of Magical Creatures, like unicorns.”

Caspar squints at him. “Why did you throw the pie into the lake?”

“It’s for Sally.”

“Sally?”

“That’s what we named the giant squid.” Caspar’s next stone plonks into the water after one skip.

“You’ve seen it?! Can you bring it here? I wanna meet Sally!” Raphael laughs, and beckons Caspar towards him.

There’s a swing made of wood that’s been through rain and storms and sunshine hanging on a tree next to the lake. The rope is thick, and when Linhardt tugs it toward him he feels the age of it, in between the fraying lines. But the wood and rope is charmed; there’s a thin veil of gold that hovers over them when he looks closely, and when he sits in it, it doesn’t creak like he thinks it would, and the rope swings with his movements without protest.

If he kicks his legs far enough, he moves from hovering over mud and grass to murky water.

Caspar laughs in surprise, drawing Linhardt’s attention to the tentacle that rises out of the lake. It seems to wave at them, and Caspar points, looking at Linhardt then back like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

And despite the fact that he already has some reading to do for class, he smiles.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth needs to study, so after his Potions class he goes to the library, because there’s no way he’s going to get work done with his friends around, something that has been proven repeatedly each year because Hilda insists on group studying which is essentially her managing to get in everyone’s business and no work getting done, which in her terms she considers an accomplishment but in Lysithea’s screams impending doom.

The library is filled with whispering and body heat, students flipping pages and the scratch of pen on paper. Tomas smiles when he enters, and Byleth dips his head in silent greeting.

The rain is the loudest sound in the library; there’s a window open just a sliver, and the scent mingles with bookshelves and the cracked spines of books opening audibly.

There’s only one table empty, and even that one is occupied. A Durmstrang student, Byleth notes with the distinct red uniform that stood out in the halls like a spot of blood in the sea of black, slumped over on the table.

 _Asleep?_ Byleth discreetly pulls out the chair in front of the student to sit. Spends a moment studying the student with forest green hair and chipped black nail polish, the rise and fall of their back.

He wonders briefly why someone would go to a library only to sleep before pulling out his books decisively. It’s none of his business what other students do, especially ones he doesn’t know.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Linhardt doesn’t know what it is that wakes him. Maybe it’s the rain pounding on the windows, the sound of a book snapping shut. Maybe it’s the loud sneeze of a student nearby, the scrape of a chair.

But when he wakes, it’s to find another student sitting in front of him, muted in the gray shadows of the raindrops trailing down the window.

His hair is the most obnoxious shade of mint green he’s ever seen. _Did he dye that himself? It looks...terrible._ But then again, Linhardt saw a Hogwarts student with bright pink hair in pigtails, so compared to that (and Lorenz’s cursed haircut) this is tamer and acceptable.

And a Hufflepuff, too, Linhardt notes with the tie paired with the boy’s uniform. _Maybe...?_ An image of Marianne turning away flashes through his mind, and he mentally shakes himself awake. He already botched his first attempt, he’s not about to try again anytime soon. Besides, he’s still hung up about Marianne. Maybe if he can get close enough to explain himself, she’ll let him study her wand.

There’s something about the girl that strikes a chord in Linhardt. The scared look in her eyes, the way she held herself close together, as if trying to be as unnoticeable or as small as possible...after seven years spent in this school, you would think she would be comfortable by now. It reminds him a little of Bernadetta.

Linhardt will have to see Marianne again at some points - it’s inevitable. They share a class.

With that thought in mind, he decides to worry about other things. Like the fact that it’s almost dinner and he can’t remember what he came to the library for in the first place.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Halloween at Hogwarts never gets old. Candlelights float in the air, a charmed colony of bats fly under the Great Hall’s velvet night sky, the ghosts present another flying formation, a few of the students are dressed in costumes.

The Goblet of Fire is brought back to the front of the hall once everyone’s finished their meal.

A paper flickers out of the Goblet. Rhea catches it out of the air to unfold it as the students wait, antsy. “The Champion for Durmstrang,” she says, “is Edelgard von Hresvelg.”

The Durmstrang group at the Gryffindor table cheer for her. A girl hugs Edelgard before she stands to walk to the front of the room.

When Headmistress Rhea announces that Dimitri will be Beauxbatons’ representative, he rises from the Slytherin table, amid the cheers and the clap on the back another Beauxbatons student gives him.

“Who do you think is gonna be the Hogwarts representative?” Ignatz wonders.

Byleth shrugs. All he knows is that he didn’t submit his name. Getting killed wasn’t on the list his father gave him when he told Byleth to live his life.

“And now for the Hogwarts Champion.” It feels like all the air has been sucked out of the Great Hall with how many students seem to be holding their breath. Rhea snatches the last paper from the Goblet and unfolds it. Audibly clears her throat. “Byleth Eisner.”

The Hufflepuff table bursts into screaming cheers. Leonie shakes Byleth’s shoulders, trying to hide her laughter. He wants to sink into the ground, preferably to the center of the earth where no one can find him.

“I didn’t submit my name,” he says, barely above the congratulations everyone seems intent to give him.

“Well, obviously _someone_ did,” Lysithea says, unbothered by the fact that the person she had wanted hadn’t been chosen as the representative of Hogwarts.

“Then who submitted my name?”

“I’ve always wanted to be an only child,” Sothis says casually.

Byleth stares. She stares back with a challenge in her eyes, smug as a cat that’s pushed a wine glass to the groundーor, in her case, a paper dropped in a cup.

It’s not uncommon for Byleth to be in life-or-death situations. It should be, considering he’s a seventeen-year-old whose greatest worry should be exams, but Hogwarts and his friends tend to drag him into unexpected adventures without his permission.

And now here he is, being thrown into danger by his sister.

Ignatz laughs uncomfortably. “I’m sure he won’t die.”

“Would be a shame if he did, I’m sure,” Sothis says lightly.

“If I die, I’m haunting you as a ghost,” Byleth warns, standing. Sothis simply sticks out her tongue in response, eloquent as always.

Jeralt shares a glance with Byleth as he makes his way to the front of the Great Hall to stand with the other Champions, one party staring in long-suffering, the other understanding.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s the boy from the library. He can’t mistake the hair - it shines under the light like a gemstone.

And, Linhardt thinks, gaze tracing a line from the boy to where he was sitting beside a certain girl with pinned-up blue hair. If what he thinks is right, and these two are friends...

Whatever look he has on his face clues in Caspar immediately, naturally. He follows Linhardt’s gaze to the Hufflepuff table. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Linhardt grins, and Caspar, for once, is the one who winces at whatever plan he’s concocting. “It’s the only idea I’ve got.”

Caspar sighs and shakes his head but in the end doesn’t stop him. He’s tried before, and it’s never worked. He’s probably thinking something along the lines of _might as well let him get over it and make a fool of himself_ , which isn’t usually his train of thought but when it comes to Linhardt being stupid it is.

After the festivities are over, the Champions are herded into a room next to the hall. As the students filter out of the Great Hall, talking at length about what they’re expecting for the Tournament, Linhardt lingers at the door of the room. A few students shoot him curious glances but do nothing.

When the door opens, Edelgard is the one leading the group walking out. She looks surprised to see him. “Were you waiting for me?”

“No, but Dorothea and Petra are waiting for outside.”

She nods and doesn’t look back. Dimitri nods his head politely as he steps outside the room, as do the Headmistresses. Shamir fixes her eyes on him, gaze crystalline, speaking in a glance: _I expect you to be back before nightfall._

The last to step out of the room is the boy himself, and Linhardt corners him at the door. The boy only looks at him blankly, and Linhardt gets the feeling that he’s politely confused.

“You’reー” Aaand he already forgot the boy’s name. Actually, he doesn’t think he’s ever heard of it; he was dozing on Caspar’s shoulder when the Champions were being announced until he was nudged awake by Ferdinand. “The Hogwarts Champion,” he says smoothly. “I’m Linhardt.”

The boy nods. “Byleth.”

 _Byleth._ He turns the name over in his head. “You’re friends with that HufflepuffーMarianne, right?”

Linhardt doesn’t think he’s asking anything weird, or wrong. But Byleth’s face goes from blank to shuttered, like blinds being closed behind his eyes, somehow without a single change occurring on his face. “You’re the boy who’s been stalking her.”

“Iーstalking? No. I meanー” _Technically._ He tilts his head. He was coming off too strong to Marianne. Maybe trying to corner her after every Arithmancy class was a bit much. “She’s mentioned me?”

“Only that a Durmstrang student was asking her strange questions and following her after class,” Byleth says. “I didn’t know she was talking about you.”

“This is just a misunderstanding. I just want to learn more about her wand.”

“Right,” Byleth says flatly, clearly disbelieving. “Is that why you came up to me to ask me about her?”

“Yes? Well, I would like to get to know her betterーas a friend,” he says hastily.

Byleth’s hand twitches. Linhardt freezes, waiting for a hex or a punchーin this situation, he expects anything.

Instead Byleth smooths his robes and puts his hands in his pockets. “You leave her alone,” Byleth says. There’s something about his tone, the way his shoulders are locked. “Stop bothering her.”

Linhardt’s reminded of the scars on Marianne’s face - an untold story, a whispered secret - and thinks he might have bitten off more than he can chew with this one.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll stop trying to learn more about her. But,” Byleth tenses as he leans closer, Linhardt’s shadow falling over him. “I want something in return.”

He glares. “What?”

Linhardt smiles. If he plays his cards right, he’ll still have something to gain. “Let me study you instead, and I’ll stop bothering Marianne.”

Byleth stays silent, staring at Linhardt. He doesn’t know what Byleth sees but Linhardt stares back at his blank face and eyes the colour of a lake hiding something in its depths Linhardt can’t see.

He looks like he squints a lot. Linhardt would think at first that maybe that means he needs glasses, but there’s something heated and concentrated in it that makes him think of Petra, eyes roaming the field as she hovered on her broomstick, searching. _Maybe he plays Quidditch._

“Fine,” Byleth says finally.

They shake on it. Linhardt grins victoriously, and Byleth only sighs, accepting his fate.


	2. Byleth “intensely minds him and his own business” Eisner vs Linhardt “nosiest bastard to set foot in Hogwarts” von Hevring

_NOTICE BOARD: Advice Column_

Is the Shrieking Shack a good vacation spot? Asking for a friend. - Caspar, Durmstrang student

\- Absolutely not. Place is said to be haunted and bed is broken, -2/10. - Claude

\- If you’re planning on going anyway, I wouldn’t mind checking the place out for ghosts! - Ashe, Beauxbatons student

>>Why in Merlin’s hairy beard would you try and look for ghosts in the Shrieking Shack when the Bloody Baron is right there. - Sothis

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Hogsmeade visits. Linhardt wasn’t interested, despite it being the only all-wizarding village in Britain. Personally, he thinks his time would be better spent napping than going to a joke shop or visiting some post office.

But Caspar is persistent, and unfortunately for Linhardt, it seems he’s doubled his efforts today.

“Let’s _go_ , Linny!” Caspar pulls Linhardt’s shoes onto Linhardt’s feet. “This is a perfect opportunity to go outside.”

“But it’s such a bad day,” Linhardt says mid-yawn, “with the rain and all, I just want to sleep.”

“It’s a good day to see if there really are ghosts in the Shrieking Shack.”

“Is that why he’s in my room?” Linhardt gestures to the boy standing beside Caspar, with gray hair and a freckled face, a blue Beauxbatons cape covering his body.

“I’m Ashe,” the boy says.

“Are you here for the ghost hunting Caspar wants to do?”

The boy pales. “Yes,” he manages, “but it’s more to make sure that there’s nothing that can possibly endanger the school and its students than to see a poltergeist.”

Linhardt drags his gaze between the two, one insistent, the other hopeful. He sighs, and bids farewell to his dashed hopes of sleeping in.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The Shrieking Shack doesn’t have any doors or windows to enter from. Caspar works at a wall from outside, trying to break in.

He’s sure Hogsmeade must look like a picturesque village of cottages, but with the slate of rain that pours, the only thing picturesque at the colourful lights coming from inside shops, beckoning outsiders to peruse their wares.

The Shrieking Shack is a small, gray thing that used to be white but in its age has splintered and remained a husk of itself. It feels like looking at the bones of a large creature, wondering what kind of destruction befell something so great.

The wall Caspar blasts apart with a spell falls in a permanent way, like a body crumbling to the floor. It falls with a dull thud, bringing up dust and debris. Linhardt thinks of a creature of the shadows stirring awake, and does not think of what grave they are walking over with this.

Ashe grabs Linhardt’s sleeve. They’ve only just met and if they were anywhere else maybe Linhardt would feel uncomfortable, but he says nothing of Ashe’s shaking grip as Caspar leads the way inside, wandtip lighting the way.

“Typical spooky houses,” Caspar mutters over the din of rain, and Linhardt tries to agree over the stumble of his heartbeat.

The sound of the rain is quieter inside, but there’s still something dripping inside the house, insistent, constant. Liquid going _plink, plink, plink_ on something metallic, and Linhardt carefully doesn’t think of the bleeding bodies of victims of monsters left out in the open, insides carved out.

The house is old, obviously lived in centuries ago. The wall has peeling brown wallpaper, revealing the things that usually hide and scurry in the darkness.

A part of the ceiling is caved in at the foot of the staircase, where even the rain doesn’t fall, as if it, too, is scared to enter the house.

It is then, perhaps, that Linhardt remembers the worst rumours he’s heard about this place. “They say the Shrieking Shack is the most haunted place in Britain.” Caspar shushes him. “And I’ve talked to Cyrilー” He still remembers his haunted gaze when he asked after his countless questions about Hogwarts, “ーhe’s never been in this place, says not even the Hogwarts ghosts will enter. The villagers say they hear something, too, at night, when the wind is quiet. It’s like howling, or crying, or screaming. Maybe all three.”

Ashe draws closer to Linhardt, pale as a ghost himself. “Please don’t tell us this right now.”

Linhardt forces his mouth closed, but the deafening silences that takes over is an unwelcome presence.

He thinks he sees something flicker just beyond the staircase on the second floor - a trick of the light, he decides.

But then Caspar says, decisively, “Let’s go upstairs,” and Linhardt just wants this all to be over. He’s close enough to Caspar that he can see the individual hairs lifting on Caspar’s arm, the goosebumps rising along his skin.

The stairs creak with every move they make, and Linhardt imagines this as the haunting music they play at their funeral when they’re found dead here due to what will be classified as ‘mysterious circumstances’ but will mean ‘oh, these fools dug too far into what was none of their business’.

The three of them turn a corner, and several things happen at once:

Something hulking a white flutters in front of them. Ashe screams, grip on Linhardt’s arm now twisting white-hot. Linhardt feels his soul leave his body for a moment.

Caspar screams and punches the ghost in the face. It falls down with an “Oof,” and Linhardt realizes that whatever scared them wasn’t a ghost at all.

From under the white sheet, a Hogwarts boy reveals himself, smiling slightly. He has curly brown hair and mischievous green eyes.

“I told you, the Shrieking Shack is _not_ a place you want to visit in your spare time,” he says, wincing and rubbing his jaw where Caspar had hit him. “Still, did you have to punch me so hard?”

“Iーyou scared us first!” Caspar yells. Linhardt attempts to calm his rapid heartbeat as Ashe wobbles, still clutching his arm like a lifeline, his laugh soft and hysterical and frankly _worrying_ when it’s right next to Linhardt’s ear. “And what are you doing here, if this place is haunted? I thought no one visited the Shrieking Shack.”

“I was trying to stop guys before you saw something you’d really regret, like the rotting corpse in the main bedroom,” he says, and Linhardt can’t tell if he’s lying or joking. The boy gathers the white sheet in his arms and stands in one swift motion. “C’mon. There’s plenty of better places to be than here, especially in Hogsmeade.” Caspar pouts. “Trust me, dude. There’s nothing hereーnothing that you want to see, at least.”

The boy walks like he’s been in the Shrieking Shack plenty of times before. It’s odd, especially paired with the information Linhardt has from Cyril.

_There’s nothing hereーnothing that you want to see, at least._

But that would mean there _is_ something here, something the boy knows about.

Linhardt narrows his eyes.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Claude saunters out of the hole, followed by two Durmstrang students along with a Beauxbatons student. Byleth isn’t surprised, after the question they saw on the Notice Board last night.

What does surprise him is Linhardt emerging with a pensive look on his face.

But once he thinks about it, is he really surprised? The Durmstrang students all know each other well - they rotate around Edelgard like planets orbiting the sun, gravitating naturally.

Claude swings his arm around the other Durmstrang boy, one with light blue hair as Lysithea repairs the broken wall. “We can show you around Hogsmeade. First stop, Zonko’s.”

“I’d rather go for butterbeer,” Leonie says, spiking a debate among the group of where to go. They settle for a vote, with Three Broomsticks gaining the most votes. Claude doesn’t seem bothered by this.

It’s a cold, rainy day, but the Durmstrang students seem unbothered. The Beauxbatons student finds shelter under Raphael’s umbrella charm as they make their way, introducing himself with a smile.

Byleth falls back to where Linhardt is walking. He’s only lightly drenched, and he curls a dripping strand of hair behind his ear, showing the golden origami crane earring he wears.

Byleth’s voice is quiet, but it still catches Linhardt’s attention when places his wand between the two of them, his own umbrella charm cast. “I thought I told you to stop getting involved.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Linhardt says. “I was the one who got dragged out of bed by Caspar. If anything, I was the least willing to go to the Shrieking Shack.

“Besides,” he adds as they enter The Three Broomsticks. Hilda shuts her umbrella and shakes out the raindrops as the others drop their charms - she’s the only one who likes Muggle umbrellas among them. “I only said I would leave Marianne alone, not anything else about Hogwarts or Hogsmeade that catches my interest.”

And he’s right. The only deal made was that Linhardt would leave Marianne alone and in return, he could study - study what about? - Byleth without complaint.

What he doesn’t know is the connection between Marianne and the Shrieking Shack, and Byleth isn’t about to tell him that anytime soon.

Linhardt ignores the bustle around him to extend his hand: “Hand it over.”

Byleth blinks. Is he expecting something? “I don’t have any...money,” he says uncertainly.

Linhardt rolls his eyes. “Your wand. Did you already forget the deal we made?”

Byleth didn’t think his wand being taken away from him was part of the deal, but he gives it to Linhardt reluctantly. They settle on an empty table with most of the group as Claude, Raphael and Caspar go to the counter to order drinks.

The Three Broomsticks is relatively full, as it always is whenever Hogwarts students storm the place. Many of the younger students are here, ones who were just recently permitted to visit. Older students for whom the magic of Hogsmeade has perhaps dimmed over time remain in their common rooms or studying in the library.

Linhardt bends Byleth’s wand. “Springy,” he mutters. “This is from Ollivander’s?”

“Yes,” Byleth replies, and then, unsure, “It’s made of pine and phoenix feather. 11 3/4 inches. I think.”

Linhardt hums. He waves the wand experimentally, and a bouquet of flowers burst out the end. “Interesting.” He returns the wand. “You might want to clean it. The Weighing of the Wands takes place before the Triwizard’s Tournament so they make sure all of the Champions have a fully-functioning wand.”

He didn’t know about that. “Thanks.” He pockets his wand as Linhardt continues mulling over his thoughts. “...Did you learn anything?”

“Plenty. You can learn a lot about a person from their wands. For example,” He waves his hand to the three approaching them with cups in their hands several more floating behind them, “Caspar has a wand made of dogwood and unicorn hair, and Edelgard’s is made of cherry and dragon heartstring. My own wand,” Linhardt flicks it out from his sleeve, “is made of hornbeam and phoenix feather.”

Claude pushes a tankard of butterbeer Byleth’s way, which he accepts gratefully. “And what does that say about them? And you.”

Linhardt takes a sip of his butterbeer without lifting it off the table. When he comes up, he has a small moustache of foam. “Dogwood wands are as noisy as their owner, and refuse to perform non-verbal spells, which I think matches with Caspar perfectly. Edelgard’s shows that she’s an extremely capable witch - she has to be, to be able to wield a cherry wand, especially paired with dragon heartstring. I’ve never seen her make a mistake when spell-casting.

“And my own wand,” Linhardt sighs, “shows my obsession with wand-making. Hornbeam wands only chooses wizards with a single, pure passion.”

“What about mine?”

Linhardt stares back at him, unreadable. “That you are mysterious. You probably don’t have any trouble casting non-verbal magic, do you?” Byleth nods. “Usually those chosen by pine are destined to live long lives...let’s hope that holds up with the Triwizard Tournament.”

Something that Ollivander said when Byleth entered his dusty shop years ago comes back to him now: _The wand chooses the wizard._

When he was eleven, he didn’t understand this, but after seeing the Sorting Hat, the Goblet of Fire, Hogwarts itself...perhaps all magical objects are sentient in some way.

Linhardt raises his mug to a toast. “I look forward to getting to know you better, Byleth.” Something about the look in his eyes makes Byleth want to look away. _Run_ , a voice in his head whispers, and he thinks the look is similar to the way he himself looks for the golden snitch on the field. Disorienting.

“Likewise,” he murmurs. Their mugs clink, and Linhardt smiles, pleased.

He still hasn’t wiped away his foam moustache.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Announcements_

A reminder to all students - Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons alike - that the Whomping Willow is dangerous and should not be approached at any point. - Professor Seteth

\- Alright, who tried to fight the Whomping Willow this time. - Claude

>> Felix is in the infirmary with a broken leg. - Ingrid, Beauxbatons student

>> We’re really just gonna throw Felix under the bus with this one, huh. - Annette, Beauxbatons student

>> His fault for trying to fight the Whomping Willow. Even Flayn knows to leave it alone. - Sothis

>> To be fair to Felix, I made a bet with him that he couldn’t touch a tree branch. - Sylvain, Beauxbatons student.

>> Of course his stupidity is encouraged by the stupidest. - Ingrid

\- Why is everything in this castle designed to kill? - Linhardt, Durmstrang student

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Linhardt would like to blame Caspar for this. Especially since it’s running into his naptime.

“‘Go to Hogwarts,’ he said,” Linhardt grumbles. “‘It’ll be fun,’ he said. Caspar, if I die in this forest the only person I’ll be haunting is you.”

Caspar turns around only to shush him quietly, which is an insult considering who he is as a person. The light of the moon barely breaks through the looming trees, but Linhardt can see Caspar’s excited grin. It’s enough to make him relax, despite their current circumstances.

“I’ve always wanted to explore the Forbidden Forest,” Ashe whispers and, why is he here again? Oh right, because he and Caspar are buddies now and over the last few days they started raising a cat together. Linhardt is too in over his head to understand. He just wants to sleep.

“The Triwizard Tournament starts in two days,” Linhardt says just to remind himself that _that’s_ still a thing, through all the classes and school work. “If we get detentionー” And can they get detention? More likely than not, Headmistress Shamir won’t hesitate to deliver judgement. “ーand miss the first trial, I’m blaming you.”

“That’s only if we get caught,” Caspar retorts. “Anyway, you didn’t seem that invested in this Tournament before we got here. What changed?”

“Byleth,” Linhardt says easily, and Ashe’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Not like that. It’s his wand.”

“Uh, that still soundsー”

“Is your head ten feet deep in the gutter or up your ass?”

“No, but I do have two younger siblings, so forgive me for thatー”

Caspar swings his own wand in front of him, light swivelling. It’s been five minutes since they’ve entered the Forbidden Forest, but so far they haven’t encountered anything - no giant spiders, no centaurs, no Ford Angelica’s. Linhardt’s not sure if that’s a good sign or a really, really bad sign and they should be booking it out of there if everything else in the forest seems to have fled.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Caspar asks.

Byleth’s wand wasn’t anything out of the ordinary at first glance. It had the trademark signs of an Ollivander’s wand, with its careful carving and straight-laced making, Linhardt could tell at a glance alone. But if he had to describe the wand, it would be...contradictory.

Phoenix feather cores are the most unstable of the three cores regularly used in wand-making. They’re the hardest cores to win over and are even harder to personalize. But once they recognize their owner, they usually remain deeply loyal to them, similar to unicorn hair.

Meanwhile, pine wood is something Linhardt has never seen another wizard have before. From what he knows, pine isn’t as resistant to creativity as some wand woods are - in fact, they adapt easily to change. That’s probably why Byleth’s wand is springy - another wizard who won the allegiance of the wand would be able to use it, like how Linhardt used it back at the bar.

But that doesn’t make sense combined with phoenix feather and its loyalty. It would make more sense combined with, perhaps, dragon heartstring. Unicorn hair wouldn’t make as much sense either, but why did Ollivander pair it with phoenix feather? And what does this say about Byleth, who wields the wand with apparent ease?

“I’m just interested because his wand wood has only been given to people who are destined to live long lives,” Linhardt says, because he knows they won’t understand his thoughts. “Wouldn’t it be funny if he ended up dying in the Tournament?”

“I think that would be really sad,” Ashe says.

“Exactly what I meant.”

“Do you guys hear anything?” Caspar asks.

“Noー” Caspar shushes Linhardt. “First you drag me here, now you won’t even let me whineー” Caspar shushes louder and extinguishes his wand, the three of them pitched into darkness.

Linhardt creeps closer to him, and that’s when he begins to make out the noise. Voices. Caspar holds a finger to his lips - _Don’t need to tell me that, especially coming from you_ \- and gestures for them to move forward slowly.

Light in the distance. Torches? There’s a clearing where the trees break off. The sounds of struggling, the clinking of metal. A voice - “Careful. That one’s a Hungarian Horntail!” and another familiar voice exclaiming, “Look at those scales...beautiful.”

A blast of fire comes close to their hiding spot, and Linhardt shrinks back. He can still feel the residual heat, like his eyebrows just got burnt off. Every part of him screams to run at the sight before him.

“Oh, saints,” Ashe whispers.

Ten grown men struggle with forcing a dragon into a cage, dragging at the chains attached to the cuffs at its limbs and tail.

A few feet away, Professor Alois and Hanneman watch. A Ministry official stands with them, and Linhardt only recognizes this because the only kind of wizard who would wear a ridiculous bowl hat in this modern age would be a Ministry official.

“Make sure not to harm them,” Professor Hanneman calls. He flinches when the dragon snaps its teeth inches from where one of the men holding onto a chain was standing. “...Too much.”

“This,” Caspar whispers reverently, “is _so cool_.”

Linhardt’s going to beat his ass when they get back to the ship. He did _not_ ask to go into the Forbidden Forest in the dead of night and find the Hogwarts professors with dragon tamers in school grounds! Moreover...

“There’s three of them,” he says. His two friends look at him in confusion, and he huffs as he waves a hand at the two other dragons, already in their cages. “There’s three dragons. Why don’t you connect the dots?”

They both seem to realize at the same time.

“They wouldn’t,” Ashe says, not quite believing himself as he does.

“Oh, they _would_ ,” Caspar says, “They so would.”

The first trial of the Triwizard Tournament: possibly dragons? Why the fuck not.

Ashe looks as pale as he did at the Shrieking Shack. “I need toーI should tell Dimitri.”

Caspar grabs Linhardt’s hand. “And we’ll tell Edelgard.”

It goes without saying that they’ll tell their school’s Champions. This is _dragons_ they’re talking about.

They make a quick escape after that, leaving the professors and dragon tamers still struggling with the Hungarian Horntail. Ashe bids them a hasty goodnight before heading to the Beauxbatons carriage-houseー...thing, which is only a few feet away from the Forbidden Forest.

It’s only when they reach the Durmstrang ship that Linhardt realizes.

“Who’s going to tell Byleth?”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Edelgard sips her tea. This early in the morning, the Great Hall barely has any students. Still, Linhardt is there with Caspar, drained from the night before and afterward, when he half-assed whatever homework was given to him in Charms - he can’t remember what it was.

“I don’t like it,” she warns them, and Linhardt knew she would say that. She’s the type of person who’ll take any advantage she can get over her opponents, and Linhardt admires her for that. But at this rate, it’s not fair if Byleth is the only one left in the dark among the Champions.

(Why does Linhardt care so much about this?)

Which is why Linhardt worked out a plan.

He rests his chin on top of his hands. “How about this: either I tell him or you do it. _And_ if you do it, I go to my classes for a week and do my work.” He bats his eyelashes innocently. “Representing our school and all that. And a bonus: now the Hogwarts Champion will owe you, which you can surely use for leverage later, if he doesn’t repay you somehow beforehand.”

“What makes you think he’ll automatically feel like he needs to repay me somehow?”

Linhardt never really understood the house sorting system in Hogwarts - why would you let a hat decide your next seven years and potential social group in a school? - but he’s glad for it now, because it makes this part - the convincing - easier.

He takes a bite out of his croissant and sprays flakes everywhere. “Because he’s a Hufflepuff. Loyalty’s in their blood.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth isn’t sure what to expect when Edelgard is waiting outside his Charms class. He thinks at first she’s there to talk to Professor Manuela, but instead she gestures at him and walks further down the hall where they’ll be able to speak without being disturbed or overheard.

Claude sees this, claps him over the shoulder and says, “Nice knowing ya, buddy,” which is extremely encouraging and just what he needed in these trying times.

The rest of the class filters out, and Byleth waits for them all to leave, their footsteps echoing in the hall, before he asks mildly, “Did you need something?”

He’s never talked to Edelgard before this. The only thing he knows about her was from Linhardt: _“I’ve never seen her make a mistake when spell-casting.”_ Doesn’t say much about her character.

There’s the hair, too, but he’s not going to ask about that, not when he hasn’t even seen her talk to Lysithea.

Edelgard squares her shoulders. She always looks like she’s hiding something - but who isn’t? “We all put on a mask to face others,” as Lorenz would say. Byleth gets the sense her burden is heavier than others.

“The first task in the Triwizard Tournament is dragons,” she says.

“Again?” Not again.

Edelgard looks taken aback. “Excuse me?”

“It’sーnothing.” How many times has Byleth had to deal with some kind of dragon-related crisis? This has to be the third time. _And hopefully the last._ “How did you find out?”

“Two of the Durmstrang students - Caspar and Linhardt, do you know them? They went into the Forbidden Forest last night, Merlin knows why,” she mutters. “They were with a Beauxbatons student when they saw the dragons, and decided to tell their school’s Champions.”

Something about her tone and wording makes something click within Byleth. “You didn’t want to tell me.”

She doesn’t look guilty about it. He doesn’t expect her to, and he understands where she’s coming from. “I made a deal, and that was all the convincing it took.”

A deal?

“That sounds familiar,” Byleth says. “Was it Linhardt?”

Edelgard smiles, and Byleth knows. “He’s quite interested in you, from what I’ve heard.”

Byleth suppresses a groan, still remembering that deal he made on Halloween night. Linhardt hasn’t bothered him since, and he supposes, with this...

“Tell him I said ‘thanks’.”

“Tell him yourself. I’m not your messenger.” She pauses before she leaves, back turned. “Good luck on the first task.”

“You, too.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


If he weren’t in the library, Linhardt would be screaming his frustration by now. Maybe that’s a little overdramatic, but that’s his state of mind at the moment. As it is, he settles for banging his head softly on the table once, mourning the fact that he couldn’t skip class to go to the hospital wing to talk with that Slytherin girl who always seems to be thereーoh, what was her name? She had a wand that didn’t match her personality at all - aspen, dragon heartstring, 13 inches, springy - but Linhardt can’t remember her name. Wasn’t she with Byleth’s group that day at Hogsmeade?

A dull scraping noise has him lifting his head from the table to see Byleth taking a seat across from him.

“You don’t look well,” Byleth says as a greeting. There’s a crease between his eyesーworry?

“Running around in a forest at night does that sometimes.”

“You should get some sleep.”

“And I would, if I hadn’t made that ridiculous deal with Edelgard to do work and attend classes for a week.” Linhardt waits to see any change, but Byleth remains stoic. Has Edelgard told him yet?

“Thank you, by the way,” he says quietly, which confirms it. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Linhardt shrugs awkwardly. “It made more sense if everyone knew than to just leave one person out.”

Byleth pulls out his books - Transfiguration, Herbology, Potions.

“Are you studying for all of that now?” Linhardt asks, which is a stupid question considering that he’s taken all of those books out. What else is he gonna do with them, eat them?

Byleth nods.

“The first trial is in two days.” Did Edelgard not tell him after all? Orー “Are you not worried?”

“Could be worse. Could be basilisksーor worse, Flayn.”

“Who’s Flayn?” Andー “Basilisks?”

“Flayn’s a Ravenclaw student in our year. She’s...eccentric,” Byleth says, as if he wants to use a different word. “And experimental. She’s the one who dyed my hair back in fourth year.” Oh, so it wasn’t him that did that to himself. Slightly relieving knowledge. Byleth’s frowning, which is the most emotion Linhardt has seen on his face so far. “It’s permanent.”

“It’s...it could be worse,” Linhardt says, trying to convince both himself and Byleth. But really, it could be worse. It could be firetruck red or puke green. But also... “Are we going to ignore the basilisks?”

“Right. That,” Byleth says flippantly. “There was a basilisk roaming the school from the pipes back in second year, but we managed to stop it before it killed anyone else.”

There are so many problems with that sentence, and Linhardt doesn’t even know where to begin.

“The pipes?” he repeats. “‘We’? Killed anyone _else_?”

Byleth blinks slowly, as if he’s never had to think about it before. It reminds Linhardt of that time Leonie casually declared the Hogwarts castle sentient and then carried on eating dinner.

Are the Hogwarts students okay?

“Wait, so if Flayn dyed your hair, did she give Lorenz that haircutー”

“No. We don’t talk about...that.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Advice Column_

Was anyone going to tell me at some point that Hogwarts had a basilisk in their pipes attacking the students or was I just supposed to find that out in passing overhearing a Hogwarts student in the library? - Annette, Beauxbatons student

\- Excuse me, what. - Petra, Durmstrang student

\- But nooo, Hogwarts is “““the safest place in the world.””” - Hilda

>> I thought the safest place in the world was Gringotts? - Ignatz

>> Not even Gringotts was safe from Flayn, so how safe is anywhere, really? - Leonie

\- It’s alright. Sothis ended up opening the Chamber of Secrets and Lorenz slayed the basilisk so the school is safe. - Byleth

>> I’m sorry, the basilisk ended up getting slain by children? - Ferdinand von Aegir

>> I’d love to say I wasn’t a child at that time, but we were all 12. - Lorenz

>> I thought the Chamber of Secrets was fake? - Ashe, Beauxbatons student

>> Can very much confirm it is real. Lots of bones. Smells bad. Basilisk husk is probably still in there. - Sothis

>> All in all, as a vacation spot: 0/10. - Claude

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth should probably feel more nervous now that the day of the first trial is upon them, but he just wants to get it over with. If he dies, he dies, right? And that’s exactly what Sothis wants, so what the hell. Might as well throw caution to the wind and call danger his middle name.

“The first task is...” Professor Alois pauses for dramatic effect. “Dragons!”

No one is surprised. Byleth suppresses a yawn. Outside the tent, the waiting audience chatters excitedly.

“Your first task will be to retrieve a golden egg from inside the nest of a mother dragon,” Professor Hanneman continues, while Alois looks moments from throwing out jazz hands. Professor Hanneman extends a small bag. “You’ll be picking which dragon you’ll face from here. Your final grade in this task will depend on speed, skill, and avoiding damage to the other dragon eggs.”

Dimitri’s the first to step forward. Byleth can see now how his Veela blood shows; he has a way of drawing the attention of the room by doing nothing at all. Byleth blinks away the imaginary sparkles forming in his eyes.

Dimitri draws his hand into the bag; his face twitches in surprise, only to come away with a live, moving, mini-dragon in his hand.

“Chinese Fireball,” Hanneman says.

Edelgard goes next. “Swedish Short-Snout.”

When Byleth dips his hand into the bag, something bites back. “And the Hungarian Horntail,” Hanneman finishes, pocketing the bag. “Right, then. You’ll be waiting here to be called forward. Good luck to you all.”

The dragon stares up at Byleth from his hand, yellow eyes glinting sharply.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Caspar pokes Linhardt awake. “It’s starting. Weren’t you the one who wanted to see this?”

Linhardt grumbles, sitting up from where he was leaning on Bernadettaーbecause the prospect of the first trial couldn’t keep her in her room today. That, or an obligation to cheer on their fellow Durmstrang Champion.

“Dragons?” Dorothea says as they watch one being led to stand near the front of the arena.

“Yup,” Caspar says.

The first Champion to start the task is Dimitri. When he begins, the boy extends his hands, andー

Linhardt snaps awake. “Where’s his wand?”

“He doesn’t have one,” Caspar says as Dimitri works on transfiguring a boulder into a brown Labrador.

“Whatーwhy?” Wands help with concentrating a wizard’s magic. And while it’s possible to cast spells wandless, doing so is incredibly difficult. You’d have to have excellent control to be able to use magic like thatーnot just over magic, but your emotions. There’s a reason why wizards, as children, often lost control of their magic when they felt a strong emotion.

“Yeah, I asked Ashe. Apparently he broke three wands before he decided to just drop it. Now he does magic wandless.”

That’s one way of going about that problem. But stillーthree wands? Linhardt mourns quietly as the dragon’s - Chinese Fireball, as was announced earlier - attention is successfully diverted to the dog. Dimitri steals away on the other side, creeping to the egg that was his goal. A cheer rises up in the crowd as he reaches it.

“Less than seven minutes,” Bernadetta says.

Dorothea bites her nails anxiously as Petra places a hand on her shoulder, calm.

The next dragon is a Swedish Short-Snout. It has mesmerizing silver-blue scales and cold golden eyes that remind Linhardt of the lights in Durmstrang’s halls.

“Charming,” he mutters as the dragon snorts a flame of brilliant blue from its nostrils, the chain on its legs clanking.

“I doubt Edelgard will have trouble if that’s the dragon she has to face. Why, I would be able to get past it in but a momentー” Ferdinand’s boast dies as Edelgard strides out of the tent to applause.

Bernadetta buries her face in her hands. “Oh, I can’t watch...”

Linhardt rolls his eyes. “When has she ever failed anything, Bernadetta? Just watch.”

There’s really nothing else they can do but that.

Edelgard extends her wand and waves it in a familiar motion that Linhardt has seen her practicing on the ship these last two days. Preparing for the first task, he realizes, as her mouth moves, unable to make out what she says, but knowing what she’s trying to do.

“A sleeping charm.”

The dragon’s eyes droop slowly. The audience seems to hold their breath as the dragon settles, curling up on the ground, a few feet away from its nest.

A quiet cheer rises as Edelgard creeps closer. As she tries to pass, though, the dragon snores, blue fire bursting from its nostrils.

Bernadetta grabs Linhardt’s arm babbling, “Oh, I can’t watch, is she dead? Did sheー”

“It’s fine.” Linhardt pries his arm away from her face so she can see the arena. “See? She already put it out.”

She makes it back to the opening of the tent without any other incidents, Golden Egg in hand.

Dorothea slumps over, clutching Petra like a lifeline. “Oh, good. She made it.” She takes a breath, realizing. “She cleared the first trial!” She tackles Petra in a hug.

“Only one left,” Caspar says with a grin.

They bring the third dragon for the final Champion. The Hungarian Horntail was difficult to catch a glimpse of in the darkness with its glistening black scales, but the wave of heat that comes from its fire is familiar.

The size difference between Byleth and the dragon is almost comical. The cheers register faintly in the background as Byleth waves his wand in the air.

The dragon paces above its nest. Its roar is more of a screech, and a few students clap their hands over their ears.

The cheers falter.

And then, coming from the school, an object flies toward Byleth: a broomstick.

Byleth mounts it and takes to the air like a fish to water, orー

“A bird to flight,” Linhardt murmurs, because that’s what he looks like in that moment. There’s something otherworldly about the way his robes flutter behind him, how he feels for the wind instinctively and rises with it. Something distinctly not-human that makes the hair raise on Linhardt’s arms.

“He’s like me,” Bernadetta says quietly, and she’s half-right. Bernadetta’s _other_ in a way that’s hard to notice, and only if you look too long. You’ll notice that sometimes her shadow moves when she is still, that at times it’ll break away.

And Bernadetta has never told a lie.

(She can’t, even if she wants to.)

Caspar’s voice is quiet for once when he says, “What, Fae?” with a capital F.

Linhardt frowns as Byleth circles the dragon’s head. He thinks of Dorothea’s voice, hypnotic, Ferdinand’s eyes that glint in the darkness at times like twin flames. Hubert’s shadow that’s always taller at night, looming. “No, it’s...something else.”

“It feels a little like Headmistress Catherine,” Dorothea says thoughtfully.

Wizards have always acted like they were the superior beings, the only ones who could wield magic. They forgot about the Fair folk, the beings that lead children into the dark, the birds who rule the skies.

And they may have forgotten, but the magic of Other lives on in them, whether they know it or not.

Byleth enters into a spinning dive under the dragon’s legs and emerges from the other side with the Golden Egg in his arms. His group, a few feet away from the Durmstrang students, scream themselves hoarse as Bylethー

Laughs uproariously.

Holds the Golden Egg above him with both hands.

He makes flight looks as easy as breathing. Linhardt knows that’s not true, can still remember his hands scrambling on the broom, his feet dangling, miles from the ground.

“There really is more to him past the terrible dye job,” Linhardt says. Caspar shoots him an amused glance.

Byleth’s laugh sounds like victory.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The Golden Egg turns out to be the clue for the second trial.

“What are you waiting for?” Leonie says as they lounge in the Hufflepuff common room, still high off the first success of the Triwizard Tournament. “Open it.”

The Golden Egg has intricate drawings on it: one of Sally - or any Giant Squid, but Byleth imagines it to be Sally - and a giant ship.

Byleth opens it. A loud screeching erupts from the Egg, overpowering the shouts of alarm of the others in the common room. He almost drops it in surprise, but manages to close it before it continues.

Sothis sits up from where she had fallen from her loveseat. “What was that!”

Ignatz helps Marianne sit up from where she had stumbled off the stool next to her harp. “Maybe the next trial is banshees?” he suggests.

Hilda snorts. “Then the only thing he’ll need are earplugs.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth can’t sleep. There’s an itch under his skin that can’t be scratched away, a thing that crawled into his mind and echoes with a scream.

He grabs his broomstick and leaves.

The wind is cold and greets him like an old friend, whipping around him as he takes to the air. The night sky doesn’t chase him, no, he is the night sky, made of pools of shadow and woven from moonlight, of the supernova of stars. Only here does the itch dull to a faint thing, an echo of a whisper.

“I have to admit, I underestimated you.”

Byleth whips around. The voice echoed, and he can’t find the source.

A light shines from his right. “Over here.”

Linhardt has shadows under his eyes and a thick pink-and-yellow blanket thrown around his shoulders over his pale blue pyjamas.

“Underestimated me?” Byleth says.

Linhardt purses his lips. “I wasn’t sure what to make of you, but there’s more to you than I first thought.” Linhardt looks at him like he knows, and a shiver runs through Byleth when Linhardt says, quietly, “What are you running from?”

And that’s the big question, isn’t it? What is Byleth trying so hard to avoid?

“When we were in third year, Sothis got access to a Time-Turner,” Byleth says. “She somehow managed to convince the Headmistress to get permission for it. She used the Time-Turner that year to take multiple naps throughout the year.”

“Wish I had a Time-Turner,” Linhardt sighs. “What does that have to do with you, thought?”

If Byleth closes his eyes and listens hard enough, he can hear children’s laughter, the familiar chant of the houses cheering on their respective Quidditch teams.

“Do you ever wish you were young again? That you had your whole life ahead of you, and didn’t have to worry about your future?”

Time. He is running from time.

But it’s impossible to run from time. Nicholas Flamel would tell you that, but he’s six feet deep in the ground, Philosopher’s Stone destroyed after Byleth’s first year at Hogwarts.

“All the time,” Linhardt says, and Byleth tries to imagine Linhardt when he was younger. Maybe he made misshapen origami cranes with clumsy hands, read books about wand-making with eyes that sparkled in wonder.

And for the first time in a long time, since he first discovered Quidditch and cast magic from his fingertips, looking into Linhardt’s eyes, his mind stills.

The itch under his skin settles.

And Byleth doesn’t have time to understand what this means, because Linhardt yawns and stretches, blanket slipping before he pulls it up again.

“Do you need help getting back to your ship?”

Linhardt shakes his head. “No. I think I’ll...be fine.” He closes his eyes.

It takes an embarrassingly long amount of time for Byleth to realize Linhardt’s fallen asleep standing, until Linhardt begins to fall and Byleth has to catch him awkwardly in his arms while still on his broomstick. It’s funny, he thinks as he adjusts Linhardt’s body so that his head rests on Byleth’s shoulder; he thought Sothis was the only one who had that ability.

But what to do...Linhardt’s back rises and falls, deep in sleep. _Maybe I can..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Points after first task:  
> \- Dimitri: 37  
> \- Edelgard: 35  
> \- Byleth: 37


	3. [insert general shenanigans here]

Linhardt wakes to a riot of yellow wallpaper. There’s rows upon rows of plants on a shelf - succulents, mostly. Creeping vines. A harp in a corner, next to an empty easel. Helga Hufflepuff smiles at him from a painting, and he’s too disoriented to figure out why she would be in his room.

He sits up. His blanket falls off him, and he realizes that he’s not in his bed. This is a couch.

He doesn’t know where he is. Did he get kidnapped by a bee colony and get placed in their beehive? It wouldn’t happen in Durmstrang, but after hearing about the Chamber of Secrets, he feels like anything is a possibility in Hogwarts.

Someone comes prancing down the stairs. The pink hair is familiar. It’s the girl he usually sees at the hospital wing humming quietly to herself, tying up her hair in pigtails.

She freezes at the sight of Linhardt. Looks around carefully.

“You...saw nothing,” she says, creeping dramatically on her tiptoes to the exit, which is a small circular doorway.

“Right,” Linhardt manages through the mouthful of hair that fell in his mouth overnight.

She’s gone before he can put words into a fully-formed sentence, the door swinging shut behind her.

Another door clicks closed. Linhardt looks up to see Marianne close the door the other girl had just left from before she saw Linhardt. The two freeze.

Linhardt hasn’t talked to her since the last time he tried, which was before the deal he made with Byleth. He isn’t about to bother her any time soon.

“Goodー” Marianne’s gone even faster the first girl down whatever rabbit hole. “I suppose that’s fair.”

Linhardt squints at the picture of Helga Hufflepuff. Sunlight shines weakly through circular windows, and Linhardt makes out dry leaves.

_Yellow. Helga Hufflepuff._

It takes _far_ too long for him to connect the dots. “Byleth! Byleth?”

A crash sounds from somewhere within the walls. The sounds of scrambling. Byleth bursts out of a door, hair a mess, pulling his robe over his head. He relaxes at the sight of Linhardt.

“Is this the Hufflepuff common room?”

Byleth nods. “I wasn’t sure if anyone at your ship would be awake, or if you snuck out, so I decided to do this instead. Sorry.”

“It’s alright. The couch was comfortable.” He’s not even lying when he says this. “That girl with the pink hair...”

“Hilda?” So _that_ was her name.

“She’s a Slytherin?”

“Yes.”

That doesn’t explain why she left the same room Marianne didー

_“You saw nothing.”_

Oh.

_But Marianne has roommates, doesn’t she?_ Linhardt glances at Byleth struggling with his tie. _Maybe only some people know?_

“Can I sit with you for breakfast?”

Byleth nods as if he expected him to all along.

Morning makes Byleth different. There was a spark in his eyes that remains dormant in the waning light.

The girl with the white hair - Lysithea, Linhardt still remembers - is at the Hufflepuff table when they arrive. Linhardt was under the impression she was a third or maybe fourth year because of her height, but that can’t be possible with the Head Girl badge pinned to her uniform. She spoons a slice of cake into her mouth and glares at them as if waiting for a retort neither of them have.

A Ravenclaw boy stumbles over with Raphael and Lorenz. Raphael is boisterously loud this early in the morning, clapping Linhardt over the back and almost making him choke on his cereal as he welcomes him to their table.

“Has anyone seen my glasses?” the Ravenclaw student mutters as he rubs his eyes blearily.

Linhardt would tell him, but he’s interrupted by the brunet Slytherin - the one who scared them back at the Shrieking Shack, Linhardt won’t forgive him for that, and he will never forget his bastard face for as long as he lives, and maybe he’s being a bit dramatic about a scare in an abandoned house but so would you if you think about it so what Linhardt’s trying to say is: it’s personal, and let’s just say if given the chance he will bust this boy’s kneecaps - and Hilda walking in.

Hilda smiles sweetly at Linhardt in a totally-not-suspicious way, definitely not saying with her eyes ‘say anything about what you saw this morning and they won’t have a body to find when you go missing,’ and Linhardt most certainly does not smile back with ‘I wasn’t planning on telling anyone but you’re testing my patience too early this morning.’ Byleth shifts between the two, aware of the tension but unsure where it stems from.

“Nice to see you actually dressed properly this morning, Claude,” Lysithea sniffs.

“I live to serve.” Claude turns to a girl walking slowly toward them with her eyes closed. “‘Morning, Flayn.”

“Mornings. I hate it.” Flayn’s helped into her seat by Hilda where she immediately lies her head on the table, asleep.

Linhardt looks at Byleth. _This_ is the Flayn who dyed his hair?

“Good morning!” Leonie says, eyes bright. She flicks the Ravenclaw boy’s nose. “Ignatz, your glasses are on your head.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

“By,” Claude manages through a mouthful of food, “you need to tell your old man to chill with the work he’s giving us.”

“You’d have better luck getting Sothis to do work,” Byleth retorts.

“Your dad works at Hogwarts?”

Byleth nods at Linhardt. “He teaches Defence Against the Dark Arts.”

Linhardt didn’t even know Professor Jeralt had a son.

In a quieter voice, Byleth says to him, “He plays ping pong and attends hula hooping classes in the summer.”

Linhardt chokes for the second time that day.

Sothis rolls in on a scooter with shades on as Linhardt recuperates, only a portion of her hair brushed and still wearing pyjamas.

“Shut the fuck up,” she says unprompted, before anyone can even open their mouth.

Claude gasps dramatically and claps his hands over Lysithea’s ears. “Not in front of the children, Sothis!”

Raphael frowns from where he clapped his hands over Flayn’s ears, the girl still slumped over the table.

Sothis rolls her eyes. Lysithea pushes Claude off with a frown. “Keep acting stupid and I’ll tell Dimitri what happened in fourth year.”

Claude laughs. “What makes you think he doesn’t know already?”

Leonie waves her fork at Linhardt. “I know Sothis is going to change into her uniform before class, but are you just gonna walk around like that all day?”

It’s not a bad idea. While he _did_ make that deal with Edelgard, he didn’t say anything about wearing his uniform. “Sure?”

It ends up being the most comfortable day in Hogwarts for Linhardt.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Advice Column_

No one told me Headmistress Rhea used to be a boxer... - Dorothea, Durmstrang student

\- ~The More You Know~ - Claude

\- Seeing as there’s no advice that can be given for this post, I’ll be taking it down. - Professor Seteth

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth’s in deep shit. He’s been trying to convince himself to stay calm for the past few minutes, but it’s not working.

It’s three days till Christmas and he hasn’t bought gifts for everyone.

Which is why on the weekend, despite the snow that’s set over them as a literal storm, he trudges to Hogsmeade, alone.

Zonko’s Joke Shop is the first place he visits. There are plenty of things there sure to please Claude or Sothis. Then Honeydukes, to buy candy for Lysithea and maybe Rephael. He should get a new paintbrush set for Ignatz. And maybe Marianne would like some kind of birdhouse for when she returns home. Or maybe he can ask Professor Gilbert to help carve one? ...But no, three days surely isn’t enough time to finish carving a birdhouse.

He goes to The Three Broomsticks, because fighting through a snowstorm will not have been worth it without butterbeer and he desperately needs a break.

The only Hogwarts students he sees are a pair of younger Gryffindors in a corner behind the large, flashy Christmas tree, playing card games. Some of the bar’s regular customers are there, but other than that it’s relatively empty, conversation a low buzz Byleth can tune out easily.

He settles beside one of the windows after his order, the sweetness of the butterbeer thrumming in his veins as he looks outside to the snow. The Christmas lights hung on the houses are small and distant, but he knows once the snow settles, Hogsmeade will look like one of those picturesque villages on the back of greeting cards.

The door to the bar opens, wind and snow rushing in before the person shuts it, the cold blowing through the room. They shake and stomp off the snow, and when the person pulls down the fur-lined hood of their green coat, Byleth realizes that it’s Linhardt.

They notice each other at the same time.

“Hey,” Byleth says, because it hasn’t been that long since they last saw each other. They meet often, unplanned, in the library. They don’t get to talk much, but he knows Linhardt’s classes outside of the mandatory ones are Arithmancy, Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies.

“Hey,” Linhardt says, looking like he tried to fight the snowstorm (and lost). He leaves to order a drink from Madame Rosmerta, and Byleth thinks that’s the end of it until Linhardt returns to his table, sitting across from him.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” Byleth asks, because it’s the only thing he can imagine Linhardt doing on weekends.

Linhardt takes a sip of his butterbeer before he answers. “Edelgard was trying to rope everyone into her Minecraft server again and the library was full so I decided to take a walk.” The tips of his ears red, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the cold at all. Byleth heard that Durmstrang was in a colder climate, so he can only assume that’s why. “What are you doing outside, alone?”

Byleth points to his feet at the bags. “Late Christmas present shopping.”

Linhardt nods in understanding. “I learned to do all my shopping in the summer so I wouldn’t forget.”

“Can’t relate,” Byleth mutters. Linhardt snorts. “How is Durmstrang? Compared to Hogwarts.”

Linhardt hums thoughtfully, taking another sip of butterbeer. And he tells Byleth about Durmstrang - tall walls, long corridors where sound echoes, the flickering of torch lights. The large tree that stood in the middle of the castle, leaves burning a brilliant red, the brightest colour in the castle.

It sounds like something straight out of... “A fairytale,” Byleth says. Specifically, the ones he used to read with Sothis when they were younger, about princesses and castles and balls.

Linhardt shrugs. “Hogwarts sounds like one, too, doesn’t it?”

He agrees. Hogwarts is its own sort of fairytale castle, dragons and all, and doesn’t that statement hit too close to home especially now.

As if in response to his thoughts, something stirs and snorts on his head.

Linhardt squints. “That’s...a miniature Hungarian Horntail, isn’t it?”

Byleth scoops it into his hand, holding it in front of him so Linhardt can peer closer. “I decided to keep her after the first trial.” The dragon stares up at Linhardt and snorts a small jet of flames. If she’s not in his room, Byleth’s been bringing her to class. He’s planning on gifting it to Flayn for Christmas - she’s one of the few people who will be delighted to find a tiny dragon in their stocking. “Are you planning to stay here for long?”

“Only as long as Edelgard’s planning on playing Minecraft and this storm is still going.” Linhardt takes to petting the dragon lightly on the head with a finger, eyes narrowed.

Byleth hums. He didn’t bring any work with him. He supposes they could play cards, maybe a game of Exploding Snap, or... He eyes one of the bags lying tucked under the table. “Do you want to build a gingerbread house?”

Linhardt shrugs. Byleth pulls out one of the boxes he was planning on giving to the group when he got back, a gingerbread house set. He can always buy another.

Linhardt is a terrible companion for gingerbread house-making. This is because he spends most of his time watching Byleth and eating the gingerbread and swiping the other sweets when Byleth isn’t looking. But other than that, with the cheesy Christmas music playing overhead and the murmur of other customers, he’s pleasant company, and Byleth finds that he doesn’t mind listening to Linhardt talk about his interests - the most recent one being Hogwarts itself.

“I asked Asheー” That would be the Beauxbatons student Byleth’s heard of “ーif they had many ghosts in Beauxbatons, but he said they didn’t. Rather, we were both surprised to find so many ghosts at Hogwarts.” Byleth shrugs. Ghosts are a staple to Hogwarts life. “That, and the fact that Hogwarts is sentient. I managed to ask Cyril, but he didn’t even answer much of my questions! ‘Yeah, Hogwarts is sentient, can you let me do my work now?’” Byleth huffs a laugh at his imitation of Cyril’s voice. “All you Hogwarts students are so flippant about the fact that the castle you live in year-round is sentient and has feelings.”

“It’sーa common, if unsaid fact,” Byleth admits, managing to make a squiggly line on a piece of gingerbread with the icing. “Most of Hogwarts has magical objects - like most recently the Goblet of Fire, or the Sorting Hat that’s used at the beginning of every year.”

“That’s another thing that bothers me.” Linhardt leans on one hand, taking a bite out of the gingerbread. “How do you let your future be determined by a talking hat? The house that you’re sorted into basically defines how your years at Hogwarts will go, what kind of friends you’ll make and whatnot.”

Byleth remembers the first day he arrived at Hogwarts, all those glittering lights and the whispers of anxious first-years around him, his nerves as he gripped the stool and the darkness of the cloth hat as a shrewd voice entered his head and said, “Let’s see what we have here...”

“Maybe it was like that before,” Byleth says, thinking of the prejudice all the houses used to face, things he’s only heard of in passing. “But not anymore. You’ve seen the tables at mealtimesーno one sits at just their house’s table all the time anymore.

“Besides,” he takes the whipped cream Linhardt was reaching for, “the Sorting Hat can be swayed.”

Linhardt arches an eyebrow. “Oh?”

Byleth sprays some of the whipped cream on an extra piece of gingerbread and takes a sugary bite. He resists the urge to put a dollop of whipped cream on Linhardt’s nose. “My sister was supposed to go to Slytherin, but she convinced the hat to put her in Hufflepuff.”

“Your sister?”

“Sothis. The green-haired one,” he adds, in case he forgot. The miniature Hungarian Horntail takes a bite out of the gingerbread he’s holding. He’s not sure if that’s bad for her, if that’ll affect her later on.

Linhardt makes a noise of understanding. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Sothis and Byleth were raised together like siblings - because they are.

Actually, Jeralt says he started raising Sothis with Byleth when he was around four years old, but Byleth doesn’t remember those years spent alone. He remembers a warm hand in his, and big green eyes.

His first real memory is of him trying to comfort Sothis, who was crying over a broken crayon. Their father had gotten her a new set of crayons later that day, and Sothis sniffled and wiped away her tears.

(She denies this ever happening, but the picture she drew that day - their family holding hands in green and blue crayon - sits in Jeralt’s office, framed next to a picture of the two of them as children smiling for the man behind the camera, Sothis’ big and toothy, Byleth’s small and slight enough to look like it was never there in the first place.)

They’ve shared many more memories after that. Byleth has seen Sothis through her phases - the bratty kid flying a broom to a tired, emo teen. From braids and updos to braces.

And Sothis has comforted Byleth (her definition of comfort) through his own times, like when he accidentally lost his new, expensive broomstick in a storm and was worried he would upset their father to lying in bed, dead inside because Flayn’s experiment had somehow left Byleth with _permanent_ mint green hair.

“She’s adopted,” Byleth says, to sum it up in two words.

“I’m an only child.” Linhardt offers up the information easily. Byleth can imagine him as a child, cooped up in a library. “My father sent me to Durmstrang becauseーwell, it was pureblood heritage. If it wasn’t, I would’ve been sent to Hogwarts on my grandmother’s insistence.”

So Linhardt’s a pureblood. That’s...actually a bit odd, what with how interested Linhardt is in magic and how it works. The pureblood students Byleth’s friends with - Claude, Hilda, etc. - treat magic as an extension of themselves, like an extra limb. To them, magic can be as simple as breathing.

But Linhardt is always asking questions about magic that he doesn’t understand - Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat.

Byleth sticks the walls of the gingerbread house together. “Your grandmother?”

“She’s the one who got me interested in wand-making in the first place.” Linhardt pops a chocolate chip into his mouth, eyeing the house. Byleth hopes he can at least restrain himself before Byleth gets the roof on top.

The conversation wanes. Linhardt switches between watching Byleth or the storm outside, head over a curled arm, tracing invisible patterns on the iced window. Byleth steadily places the roof on top of his gingerbread house, deflecting attacks from his dragon. They end up eating it, but not before Byleth manages to take a picture to send to the group chat.

“Looks like the snowstorm has finally stopped,” Linhardt says, and when Byleth glances outside, he can see he’s right. Linhardt stands and stretches, crumbs still all over his front. Byleth suppresses a smile. “Hopefully the library’s empty. I still have homework from some classes left, and I can’t get them done on the ship with all that noise.”

Byleth sweeps the crumbs off the table into the box to throw out later. “The library should be fairly empty since it’s the holidays; students should have returned home.”

“I suppose the Yule Ball got in the way of that.”

“What ball?”

Linhardt blinks, arms falling to his sides. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?” Is there something he forgot?

“The Yule Ball’s held at the same time as the Triwizard Tournament. The Champions are supposed to lead the schools in a dance.”

Ah.

It appears that Byleth’s in even deeper shit than before he started this day.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Caspar’s clothes - faded blue jeans - hit Linhardt in the face from where he’s lying on Caspar’s bed. Beside him, Dorothea stretches out like the bed is her own.

Caspar groans from somewhere on the floor. Linhardt can’t make him out because he’s looking at the ceiling and the floor is a mess of clothing so he doubts he’ll find Caspar anyway. ‘Uptown Girl’ blasts somewhere from Caspar’s phone, muffled from underneath a pile of clothing.

“How did I forget,” Caspar starts, “to bring _the one thing_ needed for this Tournament!”

“To be fair, you’re not a Champion, so it’s not like you’re expected to attend the Yule Ball,” Linhardt says. A shirt whacks him in the face in response.

“Easy for you to sayーyou’re not even going, but you still remembered to bring a suit!”

Dorothea drops her phone on her face. “Linny’s not going to the ball?” She sits up. “Why not?”

“It’s boring,” Linhardt points out. “I can spend my time much better doing my research. Or sleeping.”

“But the dancing. The gowns. The romance.” Dorothea sighs longingly. Linhardt has heard it enough times to not gag, but it’s a near thing.

“Who are you going with?”

“Petra. Apparently Edelgard already has a date, though she won’t say who it is.” She, Petra and Edelgard all have this _thing_ going on. Linhardt doesn’t know what to call it, because he’s never cared enough to ask, so he’s reduced to leaving it unnamed like a third grader who gets embarrassed by the mere mention of the L-word in passing. Are they dating? Probably, unless it’s some kind of deal he doesn’t know about.

“Linhardt has the opposite problem of me,” Caspar says. “No date, but a suit.” Because Ashe managed to ask out Caspar after their Care of Magical Creatures class. Caspar had been a bit whiny afterward, saying that he had planned to ask Ashe later that night and that Ashe had beat him to the punch.

“That’s because I’m not planning on going.”

“Let me borrow your suit, then.”

“It won’t fit you even if I did, you’re too short. Also, green is not your colour.”

He can hear Caspar’s frown. “I think it brings out my eyes.”

“Never fear, Caspar.” Dorothea swings her legs over the edge of the bed. “I’m subscribed to a certain witch magazine that’ll have a suit delivered in two days’ time.”

“Really?!”

“Yes, but then you’ll owe me afterward.”

“Uh...how much do I need to pay you back?”

“I’m not talking money.” Dorothea’s grin looks a little like Hubert’s at the moment. “But I may need to call in a favour, and you’ll have to help me if I ask.”

“Do you just want a shoutout on my Twitch channel? I can do that without you askingー”

“That’s not what I meantー”

Linhardt throws his arm over his face as if that can block out the rest of the conversation. It doesn’t, but his eyes are hidden by the light, and maybe that can help him drift into sleep as the two of them argue over the ownership of Caspar’s Twitch account.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Advice Column_

I’ve asked out everyone, but I don’t have anyone to go with to the Yule Ball :( - Sylvain, Beauxbatons student

\- It’s because your vibes are rancid, sir. - Annette, Beauxbatons student

\- Then die. - Felix, Beauxbatons student

>> Aren’t you that kid who tried to fight the Whomping Willow? - Hilda

>> Felix :(((((( - Sylvain

>> I would kill you myself, but the energy expended would not be worth your life.

>> Remember before we left, I told you guys to leave your sexual tension at Beauxbatons? Remember when I said that, or did your little pea brains not absorb what I said? - Ingrid, Beauxbatons

>> You call this sexual tension????? - Sothis

\- If by asking ‘everyone’ you mean every girl you came across, then yes, you did ask out everyone and got rejected by all of them. - Dorothea, Durmstrang student

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Sothis sighs long-sufferingly as Byleth steps on her toes for the eleventh time.

“It’s your fault I’m in this Tournament in the first place,” he retorts.

She rolls her eyes. “More like it’s your fault for being worthy enough to be chosen.”

“I’m going to die.” Albeit, not because of dragons or something equally violent, but of public shaming on the dance floor, which is much worse.

Sothis huffs. “Quit being a baby. So maybe you’ll trip a little. What’s wrong with that?”

In essence, nothing. As the Hogwarts Champion, meant to represent their school? Everything.

“I still don’t have a date.”

“Just ask someone,” Sothis says, like asking is as easy as dropping a friend a ‘coffee?’ text.

How did Byleth miss the fact that there was a Yule Ball he needed to prepare for?

“Easy for you to say,” Byleth murmurs, trying to keep up with the upbeat song blasting from the speakers in the common room. “Everyone has a date at this point.”

_I could be brown_

_I could be blue_

_I could be violet sky_

_I could be hurtful_

_I could be purple_

_I could be anything you like_

Byleth steps on Sothis’s foot again. She breaks apart to wave her hands in the air, collapsing face-first in her loveseat. “Someone take over.”

Claude is the next to take Byleth’s hands, if only because he feels sorry for Byleth (unlike Sothis), isn’t too lazy to stand (Hilda, nursing her food coma), and can actually dance (sorry, Ignatz).

“Is there anyone you’re thinking of?” Claude allows Byleth to take the lead. His moves are smoother than Sothis, practiced yet elegant.

Byleth shakes his head. Off the top of his head, he can’t think of anyone he’d bring to the Yule Ball.

The scratch of pen on paper stops; Leonie glances up thoughtfully. “What about that Durmstrang student who sat with us for breakfast once? Linhardt, wasn’t it?” Byleth wrinkles his nose. “What, you don’t like him?”

“...It’s not that.” His friends know Linhardt was the one who was bothering Marianne, but after the deal Byleth made Linhardt hasn’t done anything otherwise. He thinks it’s safe to say he and Linhardt are friends, acquaintances at the very least. But... “I don’t think he’s planning on going to the Yule Ball.” It doesn’t seem like something Linhardt would attend voluntarily.

“Doesn’t that mean he doesn’t have a date?” Lysithea says, pausing from her wandwork. “All the more likely you can convince him.”

“I’m not sure if he would be so easily swayed,” Byleth says. Claude spins away and returns to Byleth’s arms in a showy fashion. What could keep Linhardt away from his research or sleep?

...Wait. Research?

Claude grins like he knows exactly what Byleth’s thinking.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


**> >Group Chat: hhhhhomewoek? dont know herr**

**December 25, 12:00AM**

**Leonie:** Happy chrismis

**Sothis:** its chrismin

**Claude:** merry crisis

**Lysithea:** Merry crisis

**Lysithea:** Fuck you

**Ignatz:** Merry Chrysler

**Byleth:** happy holliyeets

**Lorenz:** You went too far with the last one put it Back

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


A list of things Linhardt’s expecting when he wakes up on Christmas morning:

  1. Presents by his bed, because Caspar kept hinting at a new set of nail polish.
  2. Some cookies at his table, because he left some for himself the night before.
  3. Waking up feeling refreshed.



What Linhardt didn’t expect:

  1. His cookies gone from its plate.
  2. Byleth barging in to his room with all the grace of a harried peacock in a zoo on its way to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting group of elementary students and none of the class.
  3. His cookies being eaten by Caspar while he was asleep, but he doesn’t know why he hoped otherwise.
  4. Waking up feeling like a vengeful spirit and almost blasting Byleth to bits.
  5. Did he mention, his cookies? If there’s anything that can help Byleth, Merlin and Morgana both help him, Linhardt is too tired for this bullshit, especially when he was planning on waking in the afternoon and not in the cursed early hours people call ‘morning’ and Linhardt calls ‘the reason why vampires had a point when they only emerged when night fell.’



“What do you want?” As much as Byleth fascinates him - and continues to fascinate him - Linhardt can’t deal with this right now. He buries himself under the sheets.

The rustling of paper. “I brought breakfast,” Byleth says, at least managing to sound meek about it.

Linhardt snatches the paper to inhale the scent of eggs and bacon: a breakfast burrito. He sniffs. It’ll do.

He finds a cup of fries buried at the bottom when he sits up, and that’s what he starts with. “So,” he says through a mouthful, “what do you want?”

Byleth bites his lip. A nervous habit? He’s never known Byleth to show his nerves. Even with the dragon he seemed calm. Uncaring, even. He’s always seemed lukewarm, if lukewarm was something you could use to define a person.

“Are you going to the Yule Ball?”

Linhardt runs his clean hand through his tangled hair. “I’m planning on spending the night researching, of course.”

Byleth bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. Linhardt follows the action silently.

“Will you go to the Yule Ball? With me.”

It takes a bit for Linhardt’s mind to catch up. “The Yule Ball?” He remembers the conversation he had a few days ago at Hogsmeade. “Oh, you don’t have a date.” Obvious once he thinks about it, considering Byleth was only informed days before.

“I’ll make it up to you,” Byleth swears.

Linhardt considers it. He already has Byleth’s promise to let him research him, in exchange for never bothering Marianne. What more could he need?

He recalls Dorothea and Caspar urging him to go to the Ball, watching Ashe ask Caspar outside of class. It’s not like he spends all his time researching, he reasons.

“You’re lucky I already brought a suit with me.”

Linhardt still isn’t completely sure even as he says it, but the grateful smile Byleth sends his way is almost enough to make up for the fact that he was woken so early.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth looks at himself in the mirror. Smooths the black vest.

“Do I look alright?” he asks out of a sense of obligation and slight nerves. Is it possible to care so much and yet so little?

Ignatz fixes his tie with a smile. “You’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

The entrance of the Great Hall is buzzing with a low energy as the students congregate the halls. There’s more colour and sparkles everywhere than Byleth has seen in Hogwarts in his life, perhaps rivalling only Halloween nights and that one time Flayn thought it was a good idea to put an open tub of sparkles in front of a large fan.

The Champions are supposed to lead the students in the first dance. Byleth finds the others in front of the closed doors. Dimitri stands with Claude, and Byleth stops short when he sees who Edelgard is waiting on.

Sothis’s dress is layered shades of green with white ruffles. Paired with Edelgard’s red suit, they look like Christmas personified.

Byleth can’t stop himself from saying, “Ugh.”

Sothis rolls her eyes. Edelgard coughs into her hand discreetly, holding back a smile, because she’s surely noticed the same unfortunate thing Byleth did.

“Byleth.”

He turns.

Linhardt’s wearing a sea green suit that matches his hair, accented with white and gold on the cuffs, jacket sleeves and tie. His hair’s been pinned back, drawing Byleth’s eyes to the gold lining Linhardt’s blue eyes.

“I didn’t know you liked pink,” he says, and Byleth struggles to find his voice.

“Uh. Yup. I like that colour.” Byleth tugs at the wrist of his pink dress shirt, feeling suddenly underdressed. Sothis snorts.

Linhardt looks him up and down. Byleth tries not to squirm. Linhardt staring at him, after all, is not unusual. “You clean up better than I thought.”

“So do you.”

Linhardt offers his arm, and Byleth takes it.

The doors to the Great Hall open. The hall’s been transformed - the chairs and benches are gone, replaced by the large Christmas tree in a corner covered in sparkling decorations and round tables and an empty space for dancing.

It’s only when the notes of the first dance starts up and Linhardt steps away to put his hands up that Byleth notices one important detail he missed in his dance practice with his friends.

Linhardt. Is taller than him.

He can hear Sothis’ mocking laughter in his head as he takes Linhardt’s hand. He’s only practiced the leading part. How did he forget Linhardt was taller than him?

Linhardt must sense his unease, because his hand tightens on Byleth’s imperceptibly. “Relax,” he murmurs. “Just follow my lead, and don’t look down.”

Fat chance, Byleth thinks. At the moment, he’s planning for his funeral after this social suicide. Perhaps he’ll be granted a smaller mercy, and someone can save him from this misery.

If he makes it out of this alive, he needs to thank Sothis with a few well-aimed curses.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Actually, the dance goes fine. If ‘fine’ could be summed up as ‘my stomach has been doing flips like Tony Hawk on a skateboard and there’s no sign of it stopping,’ from the amount of dipping and spinning he went through, Linhardt’s hand on his waist acting as a support throughout all this.

Later, when they’re sitting at a table and eating, Linhardt says, “You know, for someone who can fly so well, I expected you to have good coordination on the ground, too.”

“I only stepped on you four times,” Byleth mumbles. He stabs into his chicken, watching Sothis get spun by Edelgard, because in a way, this whole situation is her fault, no matter what she tells Byleth.

Linhardt’s skipped straight to dessert, because apparently the main course wasn’t deserving of his attention or time. Claude and Dimitri settle at a table nearby, and Byleth hears Claude proclaim, “This chicken is almost as juicy as my ass,” and manages not to spit out his chicken at the last minute. Linhardt chokes on his ice cream.

“Thank you,” Byleth says after Linhardt recovers. “For being my date tonight.”

“It’s fine.” The silence lengthens but Byleth says nothing, feeling like Linhardt is trying to tell him something. “You knowー” He fumbles, hand landing on Byleth’s wrist. Byleth almost pulls away, but Linhardt presses down gently, his weight purposeful, and the buzzing in Byleth’s mind tapers off. “You know you don’t have to trade in favours to get me to do something, right?”

“What?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Linhardt searches his eyes insistently. Unlike the first time, Byleth doesn’t feel like he’s being scrutinized under a microscope. “I would...think we are friends, at this point.”

Byleth’s mind catches up with what Linhardt’s saying. “No,” he blurts, “I mean, yes. You’re right. We’re friends.”

Linhardt smiles at him gently, moving to pick up his spoon. His hand remains on his wrist, and Byleth, suddenly restless, scours the hall. The ceiling glitters with countless golden stars, spinning and pulsing like a heartbeat to the music. The Weird Sisters have taken the stage, the students dancing with wild abandon. Marianne, Hilda, Lorenz and Lysithea are nowhere in sight, having left the Great Hall some time ago.

Byleth offers to walk Linhardt back to his ship after he finishes his dinner (dessert). The cold wind nips at their clothes. Linhardt casts a warming charm over them, though his nose remains pink at the end from the cold.

“Full moon tonight,” Linhardt observes passively among the crunching of their feet in snow.

Byleth nods, his breath escaping as fog. “Did you have fun tonight?” He could have offered to dance more, saw Caspar and Ashe shredding it on the dance floor, but he wasn’t sure if Linhardt wanted to stay any longer.

“I did.” It doesn’t sound like he’s lying, but it’s also not the answer Byleth was suspecting. “It’s nice to know the Hogwarts Champion isn’t as stoic as he seems.”

“You thought I was stoic?”

“Well, with your face and all.” Linhardt gestures to his own and mirrors Byleth’s normally flat facial expression. Byleth’s lip twitches.

“And I thought you wouldn’t be able to dance at all,” he teases. “Would fall asleep before it was over.”

“I _do_ try to stay awake when it comes to things I care about.”

Byleth ducks his head and continues forward. Linhardt catches up to him easily, laughter escaping with fog even as their arms tingle with magic and warmth, and Byleth thinks of Linhardt’s face framed perfectly in the moonlight.

The ship creaks. The sails shiver. It seems they’re alone, or at least anyone occupying the ship is asleep.

“Thank you,” Linhardt says once they reach his door. He’s unpinned his hair by now, letting it fall over his like it normally does. Byleth gets the urge to reach out and brush it back. “Dancing with you was fun.”

“If you could call my awkward chicken walk dancing.”

Linhardt smiles. “I’m sure a chicken could dance better than you.”

He’s probably - who is he kidding, _probably_? - right.

“Goodnight,” Byleth says.

“‘Night.” The door shuts with a click, and he hears Linhardt yawn from the other side.

The warming charm remains with him the whole walk back like sunlight in his heart when he returns to the Great Hall. from the professor’s table, Headmistress Rhea takes a sip of champagne from a glass.

And he knows he doesn’t owe Linhardt anything, but he still wants to do something for him, something Linhardt wouldn’t be able to do on his own.

So he runs up to Rhea, breathless, and says, “Headmistress, is it alright if I ask you something...?”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The other students have staggered off after the snowball fight. Dimitri shakes his hair, the snow on his head flying everywhere. Edelgard is helped up by a large Beauxbatons student from the pile of snow she was buried under.

“Can’t say this hasn’t been a pleasure,” Claude says, hanging upside down in a tree. Linhardt doesn’t know how he managed to get there, but he can imagine the view of all the students recuperating from the impromptu snowball fight that occurred when Linhardt just _happened_ to be outside with Caspar. A complete coincidence, he’s sure. It’s not like he saw Ashe coming a mile away with a snowball in his hands while Caspar was yammering about how the lake was frozen over and he can’t see Sally and decided to just watch shit go down like a Renaissance painting in real time as Caspar called in reinforcements from the Durmstrang ship and Ashe returned with the Beauxbatons students with the Hogwarts students following at their heels, courtesy of Claude, probably.

“Barbarians, all of you,” Lorenz says, as if he’s not shaking snow out of his coat right this moment, and isn’t a barbarian himself with the terrible haircut.

A figure rises suddenly from a pile of snow under a tree with a dramatic gasp like the undead. Ferdinand wipes the snow out of his face, spluttering. Lysithea stands nearby holding an empty bucket with Dorothea, who’s leaning on a shovel. They fist-bump.

Ten feet away, a Beauxbatons student is digging furiously with a shovel of his own. A red-headed Beauxbatons student lies passed out face first in the snow a few feet away from the growing hole. Linhardt is not sure whether to be concerned, if this behaviour is normal, or if he cares enough to be concerned.

A pair of figure skates drop to hang in front of Linhardt’s face. He cranes his neck from where he’s sitting to see Caspar grinning, snowball fight forgotten. His own hockey skates are held in his other hand.

Linhardt frowns. “What if the ice breaks?” He takes his skates anyway, his body protesting as he stands and brushes off the stray snow that managed to land on him while observing the three-way fight.

“I’ll be testing it first, of course!” Caspar says.

There’s no way Caspar’s going to die from this, Linhardt reasons. Caspar wouldn’t want to die via drowning. Of course, willpower alone won’t guarantee if he actually dies or not, but it would be a little ironic if a student ended up dying not because of the Triwizard Tournament this year.

(And also terrible, because if Caspar dies, Linhardt’s not sure what he would do.)

There’s a student Linhardt easily identified to be Byleth sitting on the swing near the lake when they arrive. He turns at the noise of their arrival.

“Yo,” Caspar says, sitting with a flump to pull on his skates. “D’you think the ice is safe enough to skate on?”

Byleth hums. “I’m not sure. Be careful.”

“Got it, chief!” Caspar taps his wand to his skates and says an incantation, the laces magically tying themselves. Byleth seems immediately interested in the spell but Caspar’s already skating away with a whoop, the sound echoing across the clearing.

Linhardt steps closer to Byleth. “Haven’t seen you since last year,” he says, because they celebrated New Years just yesterday, him and his friends on the ship watching fireworks explode over Hogwarts and Hogsmeade.

Byleth’s mouth quirks up in a near-smile at the bad joke. “I missed you,” he says, and Linhardt has to pause because. He can’t tell if that was supposed to be a joke or the truth (or both?).

Linhardt clumsily waves his hand at Byleth because no, no, he’s not flustered, not at all. “Nice shirt.”

Byleth looks down at the jumper he’s wearing, red and in the white circle in the center says ‘Thing 2.’ “Our dad gives us a new one every year.”

“Does he knit them himself?”

“Maybe.” Byleth looks away secretively, hands landing on the golden object in his hands that makes Linhardt back away immediately once he recognizes it.

“That’s the Golden Egg, isn’t it?” He doesn’t have to wait for a confirmation; Edelgard showed them hers after the first trial. “You’re not going to open it, are you?”

Byleth shakes his head. “Just thinking,” he murmurs.

Edelgard still hasn’t figured out the clueーunless the clue was the ear-shattering screaming. Linhardt hopes that wasn’t the clue, or the second trial will be very unpleasant to watch. But he’s not about to tell Byleth about the Durmstrang Champion’s problems when he still owes her from the first trial.

A crack and splash distracts him. He glances at the lake, only to find it empty.

  
  
  


Empty?

“Caspar?” he calls.

No answer.

Before he can panic further, Byleth stands beside him at the edge of the lake to point at something in the distance. “The ice broke.” And if Linhardt squints, he can see choppy waves breaking the surface.

He tries to run forward, but Byleth pulls him back. He pushes, yet Byleth’s grip remains tight on Linhardt’s arm. “Wait.”

“I can’t wait!” he snarls, aiming a swing at Byleth with his skates. Byleth dodges. “Casparー”

“I know. But look.” Byleth points into the ice.

Linhardt’s scared he’ll see Caspar’s floating face - how is Byleth so composed? - but looks anyway, because he needs to confirm with his own eyes if Caspar, if Caspar’sー

What he doesn’t expect to see is a long, inky black shadow travelling the waters underneath the ice.

The water breaks; the sound of Caspar’s gasp as he resurfaces is the loudest, most relieving sound Linhardt’s heard. This time, Byleth lets Linhardt run to Caspar, collapsing at his feet.

“What happened?” He hauls Caspar up with some difficulty, pulling him away from the hole in the ice back. He’s about drag him to the surface when his stomach swoops. He grabs Caspar before he floats away, only to see them both floating in the air.

Byleth stands at the shore with his wand in the air, directing them closer to the ground. Linhardt, in his panic, had forgotten he could use magic.

Behind them from the hole, a tentacle waves politely before disappearing back into the water. Byleth waves back with his other hand, mystified.

They collapse with a thud on snow and solid ground.

“Accidentally broke the ice,” Caspar says. He’s not shivering, but Linhardt casts a warming charm anyway. He’s here, he’s safe, thankfully not dead and Linhardt has never hated ice so much in his life.

“No more ice skating today,” he declares. “Or ever.”

Caspar pouts, but he also looks like a wet rat, so he’ll have to concede for defeat this time. Linhardt helps him shuck off his skates that now seem stuck to his feet, trying to stop his hands from shaking.

A warming charm falls over him, and he looks up to see Byleth approaching them. “You okay?” he asks.

“I’ll be fine,” Caspar says. “Durmstrang’s way colder than the lake.”

Linhardt nods, careful to keep his head down. He had been so scaredーscared enough to snap at Byleth, but Byleth had been so calm.

“They should have hot chocolate in the kitchen,” he says, and Caspar perks up like a puppy.

“You go ahead,” Byleth says after Caspar’s skates have been successfully taken off. “I need to go talk to Claude.”

“Alright.” Linhardt watches Byleth go, and wonders if he’s mad at him.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Claude accepts Byleth’s request easily enough, considering he’ll be without the Marauder’s Map for a night.

The Prefect’s washroom is located behind the fourth door on the fifth floor to left of the statue of Boris the Bewildered. The bathtub is more like a mini swimming pool with how large it is. Byleth plays around with the different types of magical bubble baths he can choose from the pipes before settling with warm water and a regular bubble bath; he doesn’t care as much as, say, Lorenz would about smelling like roses.

His clothes, the map and Flayn’s cloak are all a safe distance away from the edge of the bath when he sinks into it. The mermaid in the glass window flips her tail at him.

He eyes the Golden Egg at the edge of the bath. In truth, he’s not completely sure if this is a good idea or a last-ditch attempt to find out the hint before the deadline - the day of the third task. But there’s no harm in trying, hopefully.

When he dunks his head under, he brings the Golden Egg with him. His grip is slippery, but he manages to open it. He braces himself for more screeching, but instead he hears a captivating voice, singing.

He resurfaces a few times in trying to get the full context of what’s being sung, shaking off the alluring voice that seems to make him sleepier each time he listens to it.

In the end, he’s left with this:

_Come seek us where our voices sound_

_We cannot sing above the ground_

_And while you’re searching ponder this;_

_We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss_

_An hour long you’ll have to look,_

_And to recover what we took,_

_But past an hour, the prospect’s black,_

_Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back._

So there’s a time limit with the second task - one hour. And whatever the next trial is, it’ll be taking place below ground. Underground, maybe? Byleth muses, eyeing the Golden Egg glowing blue underwater. Or...

The mermaid giggles and flips her hair.

_The lake?_

It’s...not unlikely, Byleth decides as he puts his clothes back on, the fabric clinging to his drying skin. Which means he’ll need to find a way to breathe underwater for an hour. There should be a charm for that, shouldn’t there?

But there’s still one part of the hint that’s bothering him - _We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss._ What would they be taking from him? Something important...his broomstick, maybe?

He’ll just have to wait and find out for that part the day of the third task. For now he’ll return to his common room, and in the morning he’ll give Edelgard a small hint if she hasn’t discovered the clue yet. He flips open the Marauder’s Map. it seems Professor Hanneman is patrolling the halls today, though he’s lingering at the library; far enough for Byleth to start his exit now.

His eyes trace the inside of the library to another set of footsteps. He’s expecting the name above it to indicate it to be Tomas, but when he sees the name, double-checks where it is in a very specific part of the library, he bites his lip, tracing back to the ship to a certain empty room.

_Are you serious?_

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


In all fairness, Linhardt would like to congratulate himself for managing to rein in his curiosity for this long. They arrived in what, October, and Linhardt’s only now in January deciding to break into the library?

Unfortunately, he can’t congratulate himself at the moment because if he makes any noise Professor Hanneman will hear him. Linhardt heard him declare his presence loudly in the empty library and extinguished his _lumos_ as quickly as he could, but the professor’s going through the bookshelves slowly, and soon he’ll find where Linhardt is hiding: in the Restricted Section.

The Restricted Section he shouldn’t be in.

Muted footsteps approach. Linhardt ducks down behind a shelf like that’ll help his case. He can already imagine the lecture he’ll get from Headmistress Shamir when he gets caught, and the detentions once they return to Durmstrang, even if he passes all his classes. He’s definitely going to die.

“Linhardt.”

He flinches, looks around. The voice had been close, but he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the rows of dark bookshelves. Maybe it was the whispering of that strange book nearby. Linhardt shivers.

“Don’t freak out,” the voice says, nearer this time.

“Whatー” A hand comes from nowhere and covers his mouth, floating in midair and attached to nothing. Okay, Linhardt can deal with that. Floating hands aren’t so bad, right?

Before he can freak out, something rushes forward. A sheet flutters over him, and what follows is the body the floating hand is attached to. Byleth releases Linhardt only to shush him quietly.

“Who’s there?” A light swings toward them, footsteps quickening. Byleth presses close to Linhardt, enough that Linhardt can feel Byleth’s wet hair dripping when it flutters near his cheek and the scent of mint, and his nose twitches and he has to hope he doesn’t _sneeze_ in this important moment.

Byleth tucks the sheet around their bodies. Linhardt wants to ask how a see-through sheet is going to help them, how this compromising situation will look when they’re caught, but Professor Hanneman reaches their area and Linhardt focuses on being still and silent. His heartbeat is suddenly the loudest sound in the library.

A hand brushes his, and Linhardt almost flinches when it curls around his wrist. Byleth gazes back at him reassuringly, and all Linhardt can do is wait for Professor Hanneman’s light to fall over themー

Only for it to go straight past them.

Professor Hanneman’s eyes pass over them like they’re not even there. He gazes at the whispering book for a moment before moving on to the next shelf. His footsteps echo as he walks farther down, and finally, the door to the library swings shut.

Linhardt releases a sigh of relief. “That’s the last time I try to sneak around Hogwarts at night,” he says when Byleth remains silent and unmoving. “Byleth?”

Byleth shifts to look at him again. “What were doing?”

Linhardt gives him a _look_ he can hopefully see in the darkness. “It’s the Restricted Section. What do you _think_ I’m doing?” With a _lumos_ , he can see Byleth looking at him with furrowed brows.

“You could’ve gotten caught.”

“If that’s what you’re worried about, you should’ve left me like that, then.”

“I...couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“...Oh,” Linhardt murmurs, breaking away from Byleth’s honest gaze. His hand under Byleth’s burns suddenly. “I thought you were mad at me, to be honest.”

The grip on Linhardt’s wrist tightens a little. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“I snapped at you, back at the lake. You were just trying to help, and I got mad. And you didn’t join us for hot chocolate after.” It was strangely off-putting, that afternoon. He didn’t think Byleth was the type of person who could get mad at others - he always seemed so _mild_.

Byleth tugs at his wrist. “Linhardt.” When he looks up, Byleth is looking back, frowning. “I would never get mad at you for something like that.”

...Oh.

Linhardt relaxes, a smile finding a way onto his face. “Is that so?”

The smile that Byleth sends back at him is small and slight and crescent-moon shaped, and Linhardt all-too-soon realizes that they’re still pressed against each other and the scent of mint is overwhelming. Pressed against the bookshelves, all Linhardt can do is cough and awkwardly extract himself from Byleth’s grip. “So? How did you know I was here? And what exactly is this?” He waves at the sheet still covering them.

“It’s an invisibility cloak.”

“You mean one of the counterfeit ones?” Their invisibility fades over time, but this one still seems to be functioning. “How much did it cost?”

“No, it’sーI didn’t buy it. This is the original. It’s not mine,” Byleth adds, when all Linhardt does is stare.

The original. Linhardt rolls it over in his head as he rubs the sheet between his fingers. It feels like silk. He thought the original invisibility cloak was just a rumour, some story made for children. But there’s always a truth to stories, aren’t there?

“You need to get back to your ship,” Byleth says when Linhardt remains quiet, contemplating.

He frowns, releasing the fabric. “I don’t suppose you can help me with that, too? Professor Hanneman might still be outside, after all.”

“You don’t need to convince me, I was planning on walking you there already.”

“How reassuring,” Linhardt murmurs, watching Byleth reach into his pocket and unfold a layered sheet of paper, dripping hair falling in front of his eyes. “Hang on, I thought there weren’t any maps of Hogwarts.”

“Not any official ones,” he replies. Linhardt peers over his shoulder to see what is most definitely a map.

“Shouldn’t they be distributing this?”

“It took four years to make, and I don’t think any of the others would like it if I did that.”

The map is an elaborate one, detailing all the passageways in Hogwarts, even areas outside the castle, like the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade. Linhardt’s eyes catch footsteps pacing the Ravenclaw common room and points. “Is that happening in real time?”

Byleth’s thumb falls on two sets of footsteps in the library, their names floating above them. “You tell me.”

“This is...” Amazing? Brilliant? Somehow, Byleth and his friends made a map of Hogwarts that also tracks the movements of everyone within the map. What kind of spells are required to make something like this? Linhardt would never make something this detailed deliberately.

“You’re more amazing than I thought,” is what leaves Linhardt’s mouth.

Byleth responds to this with a bland, “Thanks.” He stands up, folding the cloak and pocketing it, the map still in his hands. “We should go, while the professor’s on the second floor.”

Hogwarts is eerie at night. Linhardt likes to think all schools have a haunted quality to them when they’re empty, the silence that was normally filled with the echoes of footsteps running down halls and the chatter of students now a shadow of itself.

Linhardt runs a hand over the Golden Egg in his hands that Byleth had him carry. “I’m assuming you were doing some research for the second task? Did it go well?” he prompts when Byleth nods.

“I think I have most of it figured out.” A pause. Byleth riffles through the map, and Linhardt can’t resist looking over Byleth’s shoulder to trace their footsteps appearing on the map, checking for anyone up ahead. “I’ll be seeing Edelgard tomorrow. Do you know if she’s figured it out yet?”

“I haven’t bothered to ask.” Linhardt casts a warming charm as they exit the school, and Byleth sends him a grateful glance, adjusting the invisibility cloak around them when it gets blown up by the cold wind. “You might be able to catch her before lunch, though. She’ll have Defence Against the Dark Arts then.”

The sky is dark above them, the world asleep. Faint light from the moon shines down on them, their footsteps in the snow the only trace that they were there.

Byleth starts, turning to face Linhardt. “I forgot to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

Byleth bites his lip, tracing a shape on the map. “I know you said I didn’t have to do anything in return for you being my date to the Yule Ball, but I decided to try and find information for you anyway, since we’re friends.” Linhardt nods when Byleth looks at him to continue hesitantly. “Does it matter at all if I told you Hogwarts was on a ley line?”

Linhardt’s thoughts screech to a halt. A ley line?

“A ley line,” he repeats. _Does_ it matter? “I don’t know,” he says honestly, and Byleth’s face falls. “Thank you, though, Byleth. I’ll need to do more research on the other schools before I can say anything about that.” And who knows _how_ he’s going to get information about Beauxbatons, let alone ask Headmistress Shamir anything. He smiles at Byleth. It was sweet of him to try and help Linhardt with his research. Byleth relaxes at his smile, the tension leaving his shoulders.

Byleth walks Linhardt all the way to his room like it’s the Yule Ball again, and Linhardt smiles a little at the memory of that night. Altogether, dancing isn’t something he’d want to do again, but there was something entertaining yet charming about watching Byleth fumble and struggle to look up at Linhardt and not trip over his own feet.

“Don’t try that again,” Byleth says lightly. “I might not be able to save you the next time you decide to pay a midnight visit to the library.”

“You’ll have nothing to worry about,” Linhardt replies smoothly, returning the Golden Egg into Byleth’s hands. “Because if I decide to do it again, I won’t be getting caught.”

Byleth scrutinizes him like he can’t tell if he’s joking or not (he’s not). He nods. “Good night.”

“Good night.” Linhardt shuts the door with a quiet click and sighs, resting his forehead against the wall. He hadn’t even managed to grab a single book from the Restricted Section. The first one he had opened looked - and _smelled_ , he shivers - like someone had spilled blood on it and left it to dry, soaking up the pages. But he still managed to get something from this trip, even if it wasn’t from the Restricted Section at all.

One of Byleth’s friends has the invisibility cloak. Linhardt reaches unthinkingly for his notebook, filled with all his nonsensical, miscellaneous questions and notes. Most recently, it’s been filled with information about Hogwarts, andーByleth.

What bothers him the most about that map, he thinks as he scribbles into the margins, isn’t the fact that when he was looking over Byleth’s shoulder he saw a passageway connecting the girl’s washroom to the fabled Chamber of Secrets, or the fact that there’s a secret passageway leading to Hogsmeade.

No, what bothers him and caught his attention was the fact that there was a passageway connecting the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack.

He might have more questions for Cyril tomorrow.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Announcements_

Class has been cancelled this morning for Care of Magical Creatures. Professor Alois has been found asleep on a long floating in the lake. He is currently being extracted to be questioned. Anyone with information is asked to come forward. - Professor Seteth

\- Who would put Alois in the lake???? - Claude

>> The question is not who, but why. - Sothis

>> I think the why’s fairly obvious. - Claude

>> Just because you think he isn’t funny, Claude, doesn’t mean others don’t share Alois’ sense of humour. - Dimitri, Beauxbatons student

>> I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who likes Alois’ dad jokes. - Sylvain, Beauxbatons student

>> I like how we all immediately assumed someone did that because of his dad jokes. Consider: maybe he offended someone. Maybe he’s secretly in line with the Americans and is looking to overthrow the Ministry. Maybe he’s abandoned his wife who thought he perished in the war and she’s been mourning for years but she heard he was alive and she’s finally tracked him all the way to Hogwarts and is extracting her revenge for abandoning her all those years ago. - Hilda

>> Personally, my revenge would involve more than just trapping him in a lake. - Claude

>> It was a suggestion. - Hilda

\- It was Headmistress Catherine and Shamir. I saw them push him into the lake. - Byleth

>> I...can’t say I can imagine them ever doing that. - Ingrid, Beauxbatons student

>> How did you see them? - Petra, Durmstrang student

>> With my eyes. - Byleth

>> Can you take a veritaserum, then, to prove yourself? - Edelgard, Durmstrang student

>> Veritaserum can be faulty, considering that it will consider anything true as long as the user believes it. - Mercedes, Beauxbatons student

>> Then we have no way of proving if what he says is true. - Edelgard

\- It’s true. Catherine and I decided to push Alois into the lake after he fell asleep during a game of Uno. - Headmistress Shamir

>> He didn’t even wake up when we banged his head on the cabinet! - Headmistress Catherine

>> ...We are one day into the start of classes after the break. - Lysithea

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Sometimes, Byleth dreams his friends are running.

Always running, never walking, like they don’t have time to walk. They’re running further, faster, and they’re leaving Byleth behind in their shadows, faster than he can go on a broom.

They never look back. Byleth just watches their backs disappear as they go, fading into the distance like the backlights of a car, and they take all the life and light with them, leaving him in darkness.

Byleth wonders if they’ll think of him at all.

He always wakes from those dreams with a cold that spreads all the way to his heart, no matter how many blankets he’s layered on top of him the night before, sweat beading his forehead.

(An itch in his veins, the urge to take flightー)

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The day dawns cold and lifeless. The audience shuffles in the makeshift stands, between the state of waking and dreaming still as the sun struggles to pierce the fog.

February 24th. The day of the second task of the Triwizard Tournament.

Edelgard is paler than usual as she stands beside Byleth on the edge of the pier installed for the second task, Dimitri beside her. Byleth asks if she’s alright.

“I’ll be fine.” She brushes off his concerns with a wave of her hand. She pauses. “I didn’t know how to swim before this. I don’t like the ocean.” She doesn’t elaborate.

Even though they’re supposed to be competing against each other, Byleth doesn’t feel very competitive. This isn’t like a Quidditch match to him, and it’s not like he willingly chose to participate.

“I hope my hint gave you some time to prepare.”

“It did. Thank you for that, by the way.” Edelgard smiles. “I was a little thrown off at first when you told me to take a bath.”

Byleth shrugs. “It was the most I could do for you with what you told me for the first task.”

Headmistress Rhea clears her throat, and with a _sonorus_ , her voice rings clear across the lake. The three large television screens floating on top of the lake flicker to life, showing her face from three different views.

“The second task is for the Champions to return from the lake with that which they hold dear.” The screens switch to a different camera, and Byleth’s breath stutters at the sight of Claude, Sothis and Linhardt asleep, their hair and clothes floating in a muted blue-green lighting. _They’re in the lake?_

_But past an hour, the prospect’s black,_

_Too late, it’s gone, it won’t come back._

What happens if they don’t rescue them before the hour’s up?

Edelgard tilts her head. “Am I supposed to be rescuing Linhardt?”

Byleth frowns. “I’m not rescuing Sothis.” She’s the whole reason he’s here in the first place. Come to think of it, he didn’t see her, Claude, or Linhardt this morning. He assumed Sothis and Linhardt had slept inーhe remembers seeing Sothis last night before she was called out of the Gryffindor common room by Professor Jeritza along with Claude, the professor telling them to go to bed soon, Byleth walking back to the Hufflepuff common room with Marianne. And Linhardt last night at dinner, a passing wave as he left to what Byleth thought would be the Durmstrang’s ship for the night. Maybe it was. Maybe, like Sothis and Claude, he was called down by a professor or his Headmistress.

“This is just an idea, but maybe they decided to take the students who were our partners for the Yule Ball,” Dimitri says, which makes more sense.

Three small objects flit toward them. At first Byleth mistakes them for golden snitches, but then makes out the glaring red of a camera. They’ll be filmed while underwater so they can be rescued and so the audience can watch, because why else would they all be gathered here, to stare at the lake’s surface for an hour?

The second task starts with a giant stopwatch displaying itself in the air, starting at 60 minutes and counting down.

“You go ahead,” Edelgard says, volume barely above the cheers of the crowd cheering them off, clutching something in her hand. “I’ll catch up.” She grins, knife-sharp, and Byleth remembers that whether he considers this a competition or not doesn’t matter, because it’s still a competition to everyone else.

The water’s cold as hell, as Sothis would probably describe it. Byleth submerges himself completely before casting the bubblehead charm, creating a pocket of air around his head. The faux-snitch camera whizzes past his head in the water, recording. He spots the inky figure of Dimitri as he swims away, already searching for where the three will be. Byleth takes out the waterproof flashlight he thought to bring and shines it around his surroundings.

Nothing to see, only dark water. Byleth explores further, diving down.

There’s plenty of fish, scales glinting dully in the lake’s light. It’s a shame fishing is prohibited in the Hogwarts lake, or else he would find himself there every afternoon.

He swims past long strands of seaweed, shadows swimming beyond the thin light his flashlight cuts. A scream from nearby quickly cuts itself off.

Byleth swings his flashlight around, but there’s only more seaweed. Something whispers from the other side this time, and he glances there with narrowed eyes.

A body crashes into the side of his head, trilling, “Byletthhhhh, sweetie, it’s been so long!”, voice unfamiliar yet tone overly familiar. Smooth hands smush his cheeks between them, and he’s looking up at a girl with squinty quartz eyes and rows of razor-sharp teeth. “When’s the last time you visited the Slytherin common room? Why, must be back in January?”

“Maria?” he manages, gently prying off her hands to get a better look at the mermaid. Her scales glint daisy yellow. “What are you doing here?”

It’s common practice for the Slytherins to communicate with the mermaids via sign language. Similar to how at the beginning and end of every year, the Hufflepuffs sleep together under a large blanket. Whenever their group is at the Slytherin common room, they always chat with the merpeople. They like gossiping with the ghosts and they give terrible love advice, but they’re fun to be around, and they give a lot of tips that end up helping in Potions and occasionally Defence Against the Dark Arts.

“I live here,” she announces, and laughs at her own joke, high and hyena-like. “Headmistress Rhea decided to hit up a deal with our chieftess - we fight you off in exchange for a human meal.” She licks her lips hungrily, but Byleth knows she’s talking about chocolate and doughnuts and other sweets the merpeople don’t have underwater for obvious reasons.

“Do I have to fight you?”

“Of course not, who do you think I am? We all have our different roles.” She bats her eyelashes. “Mine is to distract you.”

“Distract me from what?”

“From this,” someone snarls from behind, and Byleth turns only to awkwardly duck the trident going for his head and swim away, paddling his arms.

Maria cackles as she circles Byleth’s head. Five other merpeople emerge from the seaweed to circle him with various weapons. Her voice is sickly sweet when she says, “What’ll it be, Byleth? I’d hate to have to kill you...though it won’t be me doing the killing.”

It says a lot about how much Byleth has been with Linhardt for him to blurt out, “Let’s work out a deal.” The merpeople pause. “I’ll give you human food instead if you help me, and it’ll be whatever you request.”

“Deal,” a merman says immediately. The others turn to look at him. “What? I don’t _really_ want to kill him.”

“Me neither,” another merperson says. The others voice their agreement. The mermaid with the trident seems disappointed that she won’t get to kill Byleth.

Maria twirls a strand of hair, a movement reminiscent of Hilda. “Alright, looks like we’ll let you go today, Byleth. I’ll go tell the chieftess the deal you made, but I’m not helping you get there. Good luck!” She swims away, the others trailing behind her. They swim too fast for him to hope to catch up and he thinks, again, of backs receding in the distance.

He continues onward, casting a warming charm for good measure because the temperature in the lake has always been freezing, even in the summertime. He can’t tell how much time has passed, but it has to have been at least half an hour. He feels like he’s spent that long searching the lake.

He eventually makes his way out of the seaweed with no way of knowing if he’s going the right way. His arms and legs ache as he swims forward. This isn’t what he had in mind for what he would be doing in his spare time without Quidditch.

The merpeople have huts made of crooked stone. Some are small and round, while others are large and gilded. He wonders how many generations of merpeople have lived there for them to build so many houses.

The merpeople in the town let him pass when they see him. When he arrives at what he assumed to be the center of the town, the chieftess is waiting, along with Maria and a small crowd of merpeople. There’s a small choir in the back singing the song from the Golden Egg, haunting and melodic.

And the three students. Still asleep, attached to a rope on a stone pike that keeps them from floating to the surface. _Dimitri and Edelgard haven’t arrived yet,_ Byleth realizes.

“I’ve heard of the deal you made with Maria,” the chieftess says. Her hair is in an elaborate braid that trails behind her like a black sea, eyes the colour of the lake in spring. “I do look forward to you keeping that promise. I’ve always wanted to taste...french fries.”

“Right,” Byleth says, mentally adding that to the growing list of ‘potential food merpeople will enjoy.’

It’s all too easy to mistake Linhardt as one of the merpeople with his sea green hair almost inky black at first glance, but his uniform gives him away. He looks uneasy when he sleeps, Byleth finds when he draws closer. _It’s like he’s always thinking of something._ There’s a furrow between his brows, and his lips are pursed in that familiar expression Byleth sees across from him in the library when Linhardt’s deep in thought.

He’s not sure how to cut Linhardt from the rope he’s tied to, and a merchild, with all the excitement of a child on Christmas day, hands him a knife. The mother swims after the child and gives Byleth a lopsided smile before whispering furiously, “What did we say about giving knives to strangers?!” The child giggles as they’re taken away.

He supposes it’s part of the deal that allows him to swim away with Linhardt without getting attacked. No one attempts to stop him, which he’s glad for - he needs to carry Linhardt in one arm, and he can’t hold both his flashlight and wand in one hand. From there, it’s just the physical exhaustion of swimming up to the light, to the surface, even as his legs begin to burn and his arm sags under Linhardt’s weigh.

By the time he breaks the surface with a gasp as his bubblehead charm pops, the arm holding Linhardt is aching, tingly all over. Linhardt shudders awake with a gasp, clutching Byleth.

“Good morning,” Byleth says. The camera that was following him the entire time hovers near his head now, his face enlarged on one of the floating television screens above a screaming crowd.

Linhardt brushes back hair that fell in front of Byleth’s face when they surfaced, curling it behind his ear, and Byleth’s mind stills, still as a lake without a ripple, a mountain without wind.

“I’d consider it a rude awakening to wake up in a lake, but considering I woke up in your arms, I’d say this is...adequate,” Linhardt says, brushing back his own wet hair, golden earrings glinting because, Byleth realizes, he doesn’t have his usual hair tie.

“So saving your life counts as ‘adequate’?” Byleth says. “I’ll be sure to remember that for later.”

Linhardt smiles, and it takes a moment for Byleth to realize that he’s smiling back, too.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth finished the second task first. Edelgard is the second to arrive, ten minutes before the hour’s up. She used gillyweed to transform herself, with flippers and gills. She managed to fend off the merpeople and rescue Sothis, who wakes up complaining but helps Edelgard swim to the edge of the lake.

Dimitri is the last to arrive, just when the time limit is up. He used the bubblehead charm, same as Byleth, but had gotten held up with a Grindylow. Claude kisses one of the scratches on his cheek, and Dimitri turns a splotchy red as he splutters.

The final numbers from the second task flash on the screens:

Dimitri: 37:

Edelgard: 39

Byleth: 37

Adding this up with the points they got from the first task, and...

“Oh, wow,” Sothis deadpans. “You’re all tied for first place. Congratulations.”

Byleth wishes Edelgard had left her in the lake to drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I Did end up using the year 2034-2035 calendar for some parts for when the full moon would appear so everything would tally up with a full moon happening the same day as the Yule Ball


	4. fellas, is it gay toーyes. the answer you’re looking for is yes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys my brain did a fcuky wucky!! I read a fic and assumed Linhardt's mom was canonically dead for the entirety I was writing this fic, so credit goes to featherx for the hc. Her ao3 acc is [here.](/users/featherx/)  
> \- Mercedes and Jeritza's ages accidentally got swapped while I was writing this and it's too late for me to change so we're just gonna live with that

_NOTICE BOARD: Miscellaneous Column_

Why’s Professor Jeritza always wearing a mask? - Annette, Beauxbatons student

\- We thought he was kinning the Phantom from Phantom of the Opera at first but turns out he’s just like that. - Claude

\- He took over Herbology in our fourth year when our last professor was almost strangled to death by Devil’s Snare. - Hilda

\- He seems strangely familiar... - Mercedes, Beauxbatons student

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Linhardt sighs and flings his last (and tenth) pillow in Dorothea’s direction. She dodges, because she is flawless and perfect to the point that it sometimes annoys him but he’s learned to live with it.

“Face it, Lin,” she says, throwing the pillow back in his face. “You like him.”

“You liiiiiike him,” Caspar repeats, like a cursed modern-day Greek chorus.

Linhardt has never wished for the sweet release of sleep or death now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dorothea shakes the bed as she bounces on it, settling near his feet. Caspar leans his head on the of the bed from the floor, looking up at Linhardt with a shit-eating grin.

“You liiiiiike him.”

Linhardt has never hated two people more in this moment.

“We’re friends.” Caspar snorts.

“Sure, and Casphar’s ‘friends’ with Ashe,” Dorothea says.

Now Caspar frowns at Dorothea. “We are friends, though. Does he think we’re not? Does he not like me?”

“You,” Dorothea mutters, “are both utterly hopeless.”

Linhardt lifts his head to put the pillow under it. “Did he tell you about the mistletoe?”

“What mistletoe?”

“It was after the Yule Ball,” Caspar says. “He said, ‘Caspar, there’s a mistletoe above us, you know what that means!’ And I replied with, ‘That’s not a mistletoe, that’s a drunk fairy hanging from a stocking’ーoh. Was he flirting with me?”

Dorothea groans. “Caspar, it’s _February_. The Yule Ball’s been over for two months now!” She drapes herself dramatically over Linhardt’s legs. “Everyone is hopeless. It’s up to me to make sure you all get your love lives together.”

“I don’t have a love life.”

“That,” she points at Linhardt, “is not the attitude we want in this household. We didn’t raise you like this. _I_ certainly didn’t raise you to be like this. Petra, sweetie, tell them how it is.”

Petra frowns from where she’s sitting in the only chair in Linhardt’s room that isn’t covered by clothes or books, a book open in her lap. “Who is this ‘Byleth’?”

“Baaaaaabe, I thought I taught you better.”

“Only the boy Linhardt has been ‘researching’ for months,” Caspar says.

“Why did you airquote the researching? I’ve done plenty of research on Byleth.”

“When’s the last time you asked him about his wand?”

Linhardt opens his mouth. Closes it. “We’re friends now,” he tries to say, but it’s unheard by Caspar declaring over him, “And that, my friends, means Linhardt is officially interested!”

Petra waves her wand and glitter and flowers burst out the end, showering the bed and floor. “Congratulations. When will be the wedding?”

Linhardt covers his face with his arms. Is this his life now? Is this how his friends will react every time he makes a new friend? Perhaps it will be less exhausting to not make friends at all.

“I don’t even know if he’s gay,” he says which, okay, not what he wanted to say but is also a question he may have been asking himself for several days now.

A loud ping interrupts the impromptu gathering. Linhardt shifts to see Dorothea pick up her phone and read: “‘His friends call him BI-leth for a reason’ーBernie! If you can send a text you can get over here!” Her footsteps sound as she leaves the room, only to return with Bernadetta in her arms. Bernadetta looks like she’s about to pass out as she stammers, “I don’t knowーuh.”

“Bullshit, Bernie, you obviously know something,” Caspar says.

“Only what Ignatz told me! And it wasn’t anything serious, we were just talkingー”

“So Byleth could be bi?” Dorothea hums. “Thank you, Bernie. This is very useful information for our befuddled Linny here.”

“I am not befuddled. I am justー”

“ーin love?” Petra asks.

“ーfriends,” Linhardt finishes. Petra looks disappointed.

“Okay, dude,” Caspar says in that _sounds fake but okay_ tone. “But, uh, that thing at the lake? That was very, uh...friendly.”

Linhardt wants to argue that he was half-asleep when that happened, but they would probably find some way to turn that around on him.

“Can I go back to sleep now?”

Dorothea yanks him up, almost pulling his arms out of its sockets. “Absolutely not. We’re playing Just Dance.”

Petra ends up carrying him the whole way there.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“So, what are you going to do about it?” Sothis says, once again hanging upside down from her loveseat. The whole room seems to pause at the question, tension taut as a bowstring as Byleth’s friends look up from their work (or not-work).

Byleth looks down at the rest of the paper he has left to fill and frowns. She’s right. At this rate, he’s only going to be able to finish his History essay and won’t be able to read through the required pages for Defence Against the Dark Arts tonight.

“I suppose I’ll just have to read through the pages dad set for us tomorrow,” he says, resigned.

“I thinkーwhat?”

“The pages. For Defence Against the Dark Arts? We’re reading up on types of shield charms.”

A book smacks him in the shoulder. “I was talking about _Linhardt_ , you stupid idiotー”

Ignatz shushes them hurriedly. Talking loudly at night can summon the professors, and technically they should all be in bed now, not chilling (read: stressing) in the Hufflepuff common room.

Byleth blinks. “What about Linhardt?” He hasn’t been able to talk to him since that morning in the lake, caught up with work. “Is he okay?”

Across from him on the table, Lysithea smacks her forehead. Ignatz blinks beside her, because apparently whatever Byleth just said caused him to reboot.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Leonie says with an awkward smile, and Byleth can’t tell if she’s mad or annoyed at something he said.

“What’s wrong, then?”

Hilda seems to resurrect from where she’s been lying defeated in a pile of papers only to shake her head and say condescendingly, “Oh, Byleth. Byleth, Byleth, Byleth.”

“Wait, aren’t you dating Linhardt?” Raphael says.

“No.” Why would he be dating Linhardt?

“But the flirting? At the lake?” Lorenz looks around him like, _I wasn’t the only one who saw that, right?_

_Was_ Linhardt flirting? “He says stuff like that sometimes.”

“Hang on, I was still in the lake,” Claude says. “Linhardt said what?”

“Something about how waking up in his arms was ‘okay’,” Leonie says, “and Byleth was smiling at him. It was a cute moment.”

Byleth nods. “Linhardt is cute.” It took a while for Byleth to realize it, but studying with him all the time in the library or occasionally eating meals with him always feels the same. It makes Byleth feel calm and warm inside. “He’s a good friend.”

“IーI need to go.” Lysithea stumbles as she stands, fumbling for her books. “If I have to spend any more time listening to people with no brain cellsー”

“Woah, slow down,” Claude says, but helps her gather her things.

Sothis sighs as she watches the others pack up. “What is Linhardt to you, Byleth? Because that song for the second task seems to know it better than you.”

_We’ve taken what you’ll sorely miss,_ rings in Byleth’s head. But of course he would miss Linhardt, he reasons, the same way he would miss Claude, or Hilda, or Marianne, or anyone else.

Sothis rolls her eyes when Byleth only looks back at her blankly. “This is the stupidest I’ve seen you yet, and I watched you help Flayn free the Gringotts dragon at one point.”

Is there something he’s missing?

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The heat in the classroom is stifling. Linhardt doesn’t know how anyone else is listening as Professor Binns drones on, but then he sees one of the Gryffindors in front of him drooping over, straining to keep awake, and thinks they are one and the same.

The problem is it’s too hot for Linhardt to even sleep in these conditions. It’s the kind of heat that sticks to his back and arms, it’s own being that makes the air heavy.

Maybe it’s the heat, the fact that he can’t sleep, Professor Binns’s voice that’s about as pleasant as the buzz of a fly that makes Linhardt do it. Maybe he’s just looking for someone else to blame.

_How do the Hogwarts student listen to this professor talk?_ Linhardt scribbles as legibly as he can in a scrawl Dorothea calls ‘half-assed cursive’, because it’s a combination of printed and cursive that switches however he feels like it. He folds the note into a simple paper airplane, charms it, and it flies out a slip between the door.

He gets his response ten minutes later.

_It’s easier to just skip the class and read the textbook,_ Linhardt reads silently. Byleth’s writing was always better than his - he’s caught glimpses of it from across the table or on the notice board; a smooth, slanted scrawl with neat, printed letters.

_ >>I didn’t think you would be the type to encourage other students to skip class. _

_Only for History of Magic._ Linhardt can hear Byleth’s voice, teasing.

He doesn’t realize he’s forgotten about the heat - or the time - until students start standing and rushing for the door, and he finds that class has already ended.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Another paper airplane makes its way to Byleth in Transfiguration. He snatches it out of the air deftly. Linhardt’s writing greets him again, saying in blue ink, _Peeves just stink-bombed Charms class. I would be more grateful for the distraction if I didn’t smell like ass._

Byleth discreetly covers his snort with a cough. Beside him, Sothis raises an unimpressed brow as he replies, _Better Peeves than anything Claude or Flayn concocted. One time, they managed to charm the desks and Professor Seteth to the ceiling by accident._

_ <<How do you charm all the desks AND your professor to the ceiling by accident? _

_ >>I guess you could say it’s part of their charm? _

_ <<...Sometimes, your humour is worse than Professor Alois’. _

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“You’re sending _love letters_ to each other now?” Caspar says, watching Linhardt pluck another airplane from where it was flying around his head to read Byleth’s response to when his birthday is (September 20th, he notes). “Dude. what century are you guys in?”

Dorothea organizes all the papers scattered on the desk into a neat pile. “It’s romantic, but...he does have a point, Lin. You’d get your replies faster if you just asked for his number.”

Linhardt frowns. There’s something about seeing Byleth’s notes - for him, only for him - in his writing that makes him feel like a constant warming charm has been cast on him. “Maybe I don’t want his number.”

“He’s gone off the deep end,” Caspar declares.

He forgets to correct them when they call it love letters.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


They keep sending letters back and forth. It happens often enough that Byleth’s friends turn from teasing, to exasperated, to forgetting why they were making such a fuss about it in the first place. Byleth himself doesn’t realize how much he’s looking forward to it until he sees a paper airplane on his bed that night, and every night afterward, Linhardt sharing something nonsensical and won’t matter in the long run but matters in the then and now.

(That’s what all conversations are, aren’t they?)

And then Linhardt starts sending different origami figures - paper cranes, frogs, swans - and Byleth finds himself staring at an origami how-to book he borrowed from the library so he can send the notes back to Linhardt with his reply. The papers Linhardt uses are never blank, they’re always ripped from an unfortunate essay that’s already been graded or doodled on so excessively Byleth can’t make out what the drawings are anymore.

Byleth tries his best. The first time he manages to complete an origami lily - guided by Marianne’s patient hand - Linhardt sends back a star with a smiley face on it, and Byleth figures he’ll learn how to make that at some point, too.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Miscellaneous_

Why are there so many empty, unused classrooms in Hogwarts? - Ashe, Beauxbatons student

\- Spare rooms for Peeves to mess around in. - Sothis

>> That clearly doesn’t work most of the time but alright. - Linhardt, Durmstrang student

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The Quidditch pitch is where the final task of the Triwizard Tournament is taking place, is what they tell the three Champions. The snow has long melted by this point, gray clouds dispersed even though it still rains and the ground turns muddy.

Byleth tries to understand the gravity of what the hedges growing on the Quidditch pitch means for him. Byleth, whose skin is always itching, aching for release. Whose mind races at night, thinking of an open field with not a tree in sight.

_It’s only for a couple of months,_ he tells himself as Sothis complains about how they still could’ve had Quidditch this year if they were only using it for the third task, tries to convince himself with words what his feelings ignore. _Only three months._

It’s not like he can’t survive without Quidditch; Quidditch is not the air he breathes. He’s not constantly looking for a competition, a rival, he’s looking for the calm flight gives him. Because for a few hours, all the world falls away, and the only thing Byleth sees is sky for miles, and there’s no panic. No rush to graduate, to make decisions, to take a step forward.

Byleth feels his world tilt ever so slightly sideways once more.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The owl flies away with his letter tied to its leg, the shadow of its wings flapping as it merges with the night. The other owls settle on their roosts, ruffling their feathers or blinking eerily at him as he stands, rooted, stuck on the figure of the owl as it flew away.

A rustling sound makes him turn. Byleth blinks at him, disoriented, windblown, a green coat thrown carelessly over his pyjamas. His grip on the broomstick is knuckle-white.

“Can’t sleep?” Byleth shakes his head. Linhardt turns back to the view overlooking the Forbidden Forest. “I was sending a letter to my father.”

Byleth moves to stand beside him. “Is he well?”

“As well as he’ll ever be, I guess.” He pauses, and here is something he never mentioned in all the letters they’ve sent each otherー “My mother passed away on this day.”

Most people would offer their condolences, no matter how stilted or forced the words seemed. Not a lot of people know how to react to the news of death, and Linhardt doesn’t think there will ever be a “right” way to reply.

Byleth asks, “Do you miss her?” and Linhardt can only say, truthfully, “A little. In a way, she’s not dead to me, not really. She was the only who introduced to me wand-making when I was little, actually, before my grandmother.” Linhardt remembers her words, how they stirred the dust in their grandmother’s workshop, brought the place to life: _It’s about the details,_ she said, pointing at the carvings on a silver wand that made it look like it had golden leaves growing around the wood, the crooked spine of another wand.

“My own mother died when I was little,” Byleth says.

“Do you miss her?”

“I miss what I could’ve had. I don’t miss her in a concrete way, but more like how a person who has only seen a lake imagines an ocean, or maybe how a desert learns to live without water.”

Linhardt understands that, too.

Byleth’s shifty tonight. Linhardt can see his restlessness in the way he never fully relaxes as he stands, always moving - shoving his hand in his pocket, then running it through his hair, moving his broomstick to the other hand.

“What are you running from this time?” Linhardt asks, because he recognizes that look from all those months ago the first time he saw Byleth tearing across the pitch. It resurfaces sometimes, when Byleth thinks no one is looking - during mealtimes when his friends are caught up in the conversation, in the library when he thinks Linhardt isn’t watching.

Or maybe he’s gotten so used to Linhardt watching him that he doesn’t notice at all that someone else sees him.

“Gravity,” Byleth says, but Linhardt knows he means something else as Linhardt leans precariously over the edge of the tower, stomach swooping at the sight, the wind howling its fierce song.

Linhardt takes a step back and clutches the wall, reminding himself to breathe.

Falling is not a fear. Falling is the wind in your ears, stretching your arms out and feeling invincible. It’s the reason why people jump.

The fear is the landing. The crunch of bones tearing, the breath knocked out of your body. What waits for you at the bottom?

“Everyone is always so sure about their future,” Byleth says. “Everyone knows what they want to be, what they want to do. I...” He bites his lip. “When all of this is over, I don’t know where I’ll be.”

Linhardt has always known where his future lies: a wand-making store of his own, where he’ll be testing whatever combinations he wants, and maybe they’ll choose a wizard, maybe not. Linhardt doesn’t want to make wands in the hopes that someday a wizard will wield it, but for the crafting of wands alone.

He just doesn’t know how he’ll get to it, if he does. The future isn’t so much a path as a million decisions branching off from each other, some leading to the same result, others going an entirely different route.

“I don’t think anyone knows where they’ll end up,” Linhardt says, because you might know now, but what about in a year? Five years? Ten? You don’t know what kind of person you’ll be then. “You should just do whatever you want, Byleth.”

He doesn’t know if that’s the right answer. He doesn’t even know if it’s a good answer - no one ever goes to him for advice, and for good reason, because he’s terrible at it.

But Byleth looks at Linhardt like he just gave him the world, so forgive him if it feels like he just drank his weight in butterbeer.

In Linhardt’s book, this is the part where he bids Byleth goodnight, returns to the ship. His bed calls, and he needs sleep.

Instead, Linhardt watches Byleth shift his feet and says, “You’ll take me to the shed where they keep the brooms, won’t you?”

“What for?”

Linhardt leans out once more just to feel the wind blast in his face. The fall, the flight, the landing.

“I’ve been thinking of going onーwhat would you call it...a midnight flight.” Linhardt smiles. “Care to join me?”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


They go to Taco Bell. It’s not where Linhardt expects them to end up but, they’re here now, so they buy food with the little Muggle money Byleth has from a cashier who’s clearly too underpaid to not bother being sober on the job.

“It was leftover from the summer,” Byleth says, legs swinging over the high-rise building. Night London rises to greet them with dim lights and smoke rising up chimneys, the rabble of the city far below them. “Whenever it was summer, we’d go back to our home, a cottage near the lake.”

Byleth continues talking about the house in the Muggle village surrounded by birch-wood trees, the lake so clear you could see right through it to the stone-filled bottom. There, he and Sothis were taught how to fish, and sometimes when their father wasn’t home or it was night, they’d sneak out with their broomsticks and fly to a clearing in the forest no one else seemed to know about and play.

In turn, Linhardt tells him about his own home, how his favourite place in the house was the rug in the library where he spent most of his childhood rolling around, books haphazardly stacked without order. The warmth and sparks of the hearth when the winter peaked, or how his father’s armchair was always the most comfortable to sleep in.

Byleth makes origami fish out of the napkins he grabbed, and Linhardt charms them to swim around their heads. The moon wanes, a circle no larger than his nail, stars scattered across the sky like purposeful splatters of paint.

“When we were little, Sothis told me the stars were holes poked in the container of the universe to help us breathe.”

“Did you believe her?”

“For five minutes,” Byleth admits. Linhardt would consider it embarrassing, but children will believe anything. If they can believe a jolly man dressed in red comes down chimneys and delivers presents (or charcoal) to children, they can believe they live in a box with air holes poked in like god is a child trying to take care of the most recent insect she found in the grass.

“Full moon was three days ago,” Linhardt says. It’s March 25th now, and he almost can’t believe he’s spent over five months at Hogwarts. Five months slogging through classes, five months sleeping on a ship instead of his usual dorm room, his _new normal_ , five months waiting for a tournament to end.

Byleth’s gone still. He won’t turn to look at Linhardt, so Linhardt moves forward, resting his arms on the wall Byleth’s sitting on to see him looking at nothing in the distance, eyes foggy.

“Is Marianne alright?”

Byleth seems to stir awake again. Below them, a drunk man staggers down the sidewalk, drunkenly singing what seems to be a sea shanty. “How long have you known?”

With that question, he answers everything Linhardt had suspected.

“Just a hunch,” Linhardt says, thinking of all the times he’s seen a portion of Byleth’s group gone after dinner, Marianne and the others nowhere to be found after the Yule Ball, the scars etched into Marianne’s face. “And some research.”

(Cyril’s face scrunching up in confusion as he said, “The Whomping Willow? It’s been here since I started my first year at Hogwarts.”)

“At first I thought that the map you guys made was brilliant. Then I got to thinking about why you would make something like that if it took years. It didn’t make sense to me that you’d invest so much time into it if you were only going to end up using it for a year or two...so I thought maybe there was some sort of personal investment.”

Byleth exhales, the echo of a laugh. “You’ve been paying more attention than I thought.”

“Not really,” Linhardt says, because he hasn’t has he? It wasn’t Marianne he was thinking about when he was watching, hovering. “Just watching you.”

Byleth hums, and at this point Linhardt wants to sigh and throw in the towel, because this boy is denser than Caspar dancing at the Yule Ball with Ashe. How many of these lines has he thrown at him? Byleth is surrounded by lifelines and ignores it in favour of wallowing into deeper waters.

And now Linhardt thinks about when he stopped observing Byleth for research purposes’ sake and just to admire his figure, his concentration as he flipped a page in a book that was surely boring him. Somewhere between _Let me study you instead_ and _Just watching you_ , between snatching gingerbread and two boys on the roof of a building in London, between _time_ and _gravity_ , Linhardt started feeling _more than_ for Byleth.

Caspar’s voice rings again, teasing: _You liiiike him._ Linhardt grimaces.

It’s not that he doesn’t care for love, but he’s always considered it more as an aside. Something to consider for later, once he had his shop and figured out how to do taxes and graduated Durmstrang. Maybe he would fall in love, but it’s not like it mattered if he didn’t. Linhardt would have his books, his research, his work, and most importantly his bed, and he thought that was all that mattered.

But here Byleth stands (sits) as a testament Linhardt planned and, really? He has to deal with _this_ now?

Sometimes Linhardt thinks maybe he can sleep these feelings off, but then he sees Byleth doing something incredibly mundane (like fidgeting with his pen or almost-smiling at Claude’s joke) and his mind and heart simultaneously say, “Fuck you.”

“The ley lines at Hogwarts,” Linhardt says, latching on to a different topic with all the millisecond-quick desperation of a person fumbling to catch their phone before it falls to the ground, “Did you know Beauxbatons and Durmstrang aren’t built on ley lines?”

“No.”

Linhardt focuses on the flex of Byleth’s arm as he leans his weight on it toward Linhardt because he’s not sure he can handle looking Byleth in the eyes right now. “I think the reason why you have so many ghosts is because of the ley lines. The castle being sentient, too.”

Byleth hums thoughtfully. “I still think it’s stupid to build a castle next to a dangerous forest,” and they let the topic settle like that, Byleth staring at the charmed origami fish and Linhardt looking-but-not at Byleth.

The flight back feels shorter. Linhardt’s broomstick dips when a strong wind ushers them forward; he never had perfect control of his broomstick even when he first learned how to fly, doesn’t belong to the sky the way some Quidditch players do.

Byleth reaches for Linhardt, steadies him with his hand in his. Byleth’s hand is cold but Linhardt feels warm and tingly all over. He squeezes his hand, and Byleth smiles another almost-smile, pulling him closer, and Linhardt thinks about flying fast enough to forget the laws of gravity.

They land where they started at the beginning of the night, the owls staring unblinkingly and cold stone ground.

Byleth hesitates. “Maybe we should have flown to the ship instead.”

“No, this is fine,” Linhardt says. “I’ll just sleep here tonight.” Byleth looks at him like he can’t tell if he’s joking or not, fully aware of Linhardt’s ability to sleep anywhere in whatever uncomfortable position. “I’ll return the school’s broomstick to the shed tomorrow.” He can fly himself to the ship.

Byleth nods, readying to take flight again. The sky has lightened considerably, and Linhardt mourns the sleep he won’t have when he arrives for breakfast in the morning.

“Wait,” he says. This isn’t a topic he wanted to return to - he promised he wouldn’t delve too deep, and look where it got him - but his curiosity has always made him reckless. “Let me ask one question about Marianne.” Byleth waits, and Linhardt takes it as a yes to continue. “You accompanied her, didn’t you? Stayed throughout the night. How were you able to...stay with her?”

“Professor Seteth’s a talented potion maker,” Byleth says, and Linhardt realizes that there’s no way the adults at Hogwarts don’t know about Marianne’s conditionーnot with the Whomping Willow being planted the year she arrived at Hogwarts. No, everything was done deliberately. “Wolfsbane Potion is expensive, but this is Hogwarts, and Marianne’s father is wealthy.”

The Wolfsbane Potion rendered uncontrollable werewolves control on their mental state during the full moon, turning them into ordinary wolves.

“Do you know about the students taught in Uagadou?” Byleth says. “By the time they’re fourteen, they’re capable of turning into their Animagus form.”

“Most wizards don’t see a use for undergoing the trials of achieving their Animagus form.” Not only that, but Animagus forms aren’t ones that can be chosen, which makes it a useless concept to many wizards.

“Claude and Marianne thought it was wise to take precautions...just in case.” Byleth holds out his broomstick, and Linhardt takes it, unsure.

Byleth wavers as he steps closer to the edge, a reed in the wind. He closes his eyes, eyelashes casting faint shadows on his cheekbones as he tilts, forwardー

He falls.

Linhardt stares at the space Byleth was occupying. “Well,” he says to no one in particular, “suppose I just dreamed this all up and wake up the next morning and Byleth will be there at breakfastー”

A bird soars up, and Linhardt’s words die in his throat. It flaps in a slow circle over the dark shadow of the lake, wings catching the wind as it soars above, and Linhardt’s thoughts race becauseーno, it can’t beーcan it? But that would beー

He holds his arm aloft. The bird turns its predatory eyes towards him, and Linhardt would shiver if he didn’t notice that they’re a familiar blue.

The bird is heavier than he expects when it lands on Linhardt’s arm, claws digging softly into the fabric of Linhardt’s sleeve, grip gentle enough to avoid tearing through cotton into flesh. Its back is blue-gray, with a white chest and eyes ringed yellow.

“Byleth?” Linhardt tries, just to reassure himself that his eyes weren’t lying to him, and the bird shifts, wings flapping in Linhardt’s face, and he laughs, disbelieving. There’s something to fear in the way the claws dig into his arms, but all he cares about is how his arm feels suddenly heavy. “Butーthere’s no way you or your friends have your Animagus forms registered in the Ministryー”

The bird - Byleth - chirps, piercingly loud, and Linhardt cringes.

“As much as your Animagus form is charming, I think I’d prefer actually being able to speak with you.”

The bird chirps again, humour in his eyes, before releasing his grip on Linhardt’s arm. Linhardt shields his eyes when the wings flap in his face, and when he puts his arms down Byleth is there again, kneeling on the ground.

“It’s illegal,” Byleth says awkwardly, “but there wasn’t anyone to stop us.”

Linhardt nods, mind swimming. It makes sense, he thinks, that Byleth’s Animagus form would be a bird. The way he flies is too natural to be normal. _Contradictory._ Linhardt smiles wryly.

“What type of bird is your Animagus form?”

“A peregrine falcon.” Linhardt gives Byleth his broomstick, their hands brushing. Byleth’s eyes remain steady on his. “You won’t tell anyone.” It’s phrased like a question.

Linhardt shakes his head. “Wouldn’t even dream of it. Speaking of dreams...” The sky has turned a hazy blue, the edge of dawn peeking from a corner of the horizon. “It’s about time I got some sleep.” _If I can sleep after all of this._

Byleth doesn’t look bothered by the fact that he spent most of the night outside. His cheeks are pink with warmth, hair windblown, his most natural state of being with his broomstick in his hands. “Meet me in the library after lunch?”

“Only if I wake up before noon,” Linhardt retorts, and Byleth’s laugh is lost in the wind as he leaves Linhardt feeling heady, like there’s no blood circulating to his head.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The closet’s long gone from his father’s office. The smell of coffee and tea lingers in the air as Jeralt prepares it. Byleth finishes folding up his latest letter from Linhardt with his reply - ‘Does Sally eat doritos?’, ‘You’ll have to try asking Raphael that. Are you at the lake again?’ - and the origami crane floats out the door, already on its way.

“Sending letters to that Durmstrang student? Von Hevring, was it?” Byleth nods. “I remember him. Sleeps in class, if he’s there.”

How fitting. Byleth hides his smile behind the cup his father gives him.

“And you rescued him, at the lake?”

“Yes, that was him.” Byleth can easily tell his father about Linhardt if he asks, from his favourite tea to his birthday, to what he wants to do when he grows up, but he knows his father doesn’t care about that, never has.

“I remember when you were little. You tugged on Sothis’s hair once to get her attention and she pushed you into the lake.” Byleth huffs a laugh. “And the first day you did magicーcompletely destroyed the kitchen, but your eyes were sparkling.” His father quiets, and Byleth remembers the smell of that magical fire he had created in the kitchen, pink and leaving an after-scent of cotton candy and lemonade. Sothis had complained about the smell afterwards, but she wasn’t as bothered as she pretended to be. Fluffed up the pillows with the scent, and that night Byleth dreamed of flying above floaty pink clouds.

“You look at him the way you did when you first did magic.”

Byleth shrugs and leans back on his chair. He can’t explain himself what it is his father sees, what everyone else seems to be seeing. All he knows is the calm in his mind that washes over him whenever he’s with Linhardt. It’s happened often enough that he’s begun to hear other sounds, different sounds, like the beating of his heart, insistent and true.

His father glances knowingly over him from the essay he’s grading, and Byleth tries to focus on his tea and not the thought of Linhardt smiling at him in the moonlight.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_ >> What’s the largest thing you’ve ever stolen? _

_ << A dragon. _

_ >> I was thinking you would say you wouldn’t have stolen anything. What’s the story? _

_ << Do you remember the Gringotts break-in that happened back when you were in fifth year? _

_ >> I heard about it. That was you? _

_ << It was Flayn’s idea. _

_ >> That makes sense. The largest thing I’ve stolen is the size of a book. _

_ << Not from the Restricted Section, I hope? _

_ >> Who are you to judge, Mr. I-broke-into-Gringotts-because-my-friend-said-so? ...And no, they weren’t from the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library. _

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Linny.” Caspar nudges him in the elbow, voice quieter than usual but still loud. “Wake up.”

Linhardt nudges his hand away weakly.

“Byleth’s coming this way.”

“He can wait five minutes.”

“I don’t think he can even wait five secondsーhey! Byleth!” Linhardt winces as Caspar’s voice returns to its loud, booming state. They’re going to get kicked out of the library if he keeps that up.

“You can leave, I know you want to see Ashe.”

From the corner of his eye, Caspar flushes. “Don’t do any funny business while you’re alone.”

“We’re in a library. Surrounded by other people. If anything, I should be telling you that,” Linhardt says, exasperated. Caspar points with two fingers at his eyes, then back at him and he retreats, and Linhardt goes back to burying his face in his arms and forgetting how the sun looks like.

Byleth slides into the chair next to him. “How was class?”

“Not the person you should be asking.” Linhardt sighs and turns sideways to face him. “Fine. I think. I only remember Potions because I was standing and Petra was hovering over our cauldron.” That, and one of the Gryffindors managed to do something wrong and their potion turned blue and smelled like moldy cheese. He’s not forgetting the stench anytime soon.

“Oh. You just smell a littleーweird.”

“Like moldy cheese?”

“Yeah. Usually you smell likeーparchment, and ink and a little sweet. Like peaches, or honey?”

“You’ve been paying attention,” Linhardt says as Byleth fiddles with the note he recognizes as the one they were passing the latest, an origami crane whose outside was used to test highlighters and markers by Dorothea.

Byleth nods. “You’re an interesting person, so it’s easy, Linhardt.”

Linhardt smushes his hand on his cheek and decides to not analyze whatever the fuck _that_ means, because Byleth has a tendency to miss social cues, or just cues in general. He does, however, admire the way Byleth looks with sunlight streaming from the library’s windows, skin tan from previous days flying outside, flipping open the book he’s pulled out, the ripple of his back as he reaches behind him for his pencil case. _Definitely prefers summer,_ and Linhardt isn’t sure if he’s thinking about himself or Byleth. He half-heartedly wishes the sun would treat him as nicely as it does Byleth, but instead it makes his skin pinken and peel.

He leans closer to peer at Byleth’s half-finished Transfiguration essay. “What happened in class this morning?”

Byleth tells him in a quiet voice how Hilda bungled her transfiguration attempt and Linhardt nods, following along with his gaze on the illustrations and instructions in the book.

(He misses the pink Byleth’s ears turn.)

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_I love everybody because I love you_

_When you stood up, walked away barefootー_

Linhardt snuggles closer, and Byleth tries not to flinch, scream, move or die. As it is, he barely manages to breathe through his nose at the stillness he’s trying to project throughout his body. Also, his foot is asleep, and the tingly rush of a crackly television screen going through it isn’t helping matters.

Byleth doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Lately he’s been feelingーstrange. Not in a bad way, just different. He feels like that time he had been standing in the lake back home, so still the fish had come swimming around his legs, flashes of reds and blues and greens. Then he moved, and the fish scattered.

He feels like those fish now, jumbled up and fleeing something, but he doesn’t know what.

Curled up around his body, Linhardt mumbles something against his thigh, breath warm, and Byleth reaches out to tuck his hair behind his ear before it falls into his mouth. He thinks that Linhardt is made for a watercolour world, with his green tones and the blue of his eyes, and he has to wonder when the flush on the tip of Linhardt’s nose became his favourite colour.

The wind flits this way and that indecisively, blowing through his hair before moving up to rustle the branches and budding leaves of the tree at his back. The waters of the lake are quiet, the merpeople that visited for Byleth’s treats long gone after thanking him with sharp, clipped accents above water and leaving the two baskets he brought empty.

The arm Linhardt’s thrown over Byleth’s arm burns, and Byleth wonders if it’s possible to have your heart tug whenever someone says your name in a certain way, to be familiar with the sounds of their footsteps or the way they breathe. The line Byleth had drawn between them when they first met is now a blurry, distant thing.

_Look at you, strawberry blond,_ Mitski sings from the phone in Linhardt’s grasp, as Byleth’s heart thunders a song he’s never heard before and he tries to weather the storm in his mind.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


_NOTICE BOARD: Announcement_

Everyone is free to use the kitchen, but please make sure to clean up after yourself once you’re done using it. - Professor Seteth

\- Flayn? - Claude

>> I wasn’t alone! I was helping a girl from Beauxbatons when it happened... - Flayn

>> Sorry, I tend to bake to destress. Usually Dedue’s with me but I didn’t wanna bother him tonight. - Annette, Beauxbatons student

>> My apologies, I was catching up on some sleep and studies. I’ll make sure this won’t happen again. - Dedue, Beauxbatons student

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The Ravenclaw tower is the best for studying, Byleth said. We can study there this evening, he said.

It’s been an hour and a half and Linhardt doesn’t even recall pulling out his pencil, let alone any work. The book open in his lap is one from Ravenclaw’s personal bookshelf, an actual diary of a witch surviving the Salem witch trials in the 1690s.

Byleth sits below him equally inactive, watching one of the Ravenclaw students use a ladder to climb up to the precarious Jenga stack, the others surrounding it with nervous anticipation. Linhardt swings his legs and leans back on the table he’s sitting on.

“Best place to study at, huh?”

The Ravenclaw common room is what dreams are made of. The bookshelves circle the common room not leaving space for much else, reaching all the way to the ceiling where planets swirl above them, charmed to show what’s happening in real time. The windows are high and arching like the library’s, the sun’s rays peeking from a corner. The only part of the wall that isn’t bookshelf or window is a statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, a portion of the wall carved away for her to overlook his students, and Linhardt doesn’t think he imagines the pride on her face as she watches the students of her house do things for the sake of doing, creating just because they can. Did she imagine this future someday, a world of innovation and wonder?

“I had a feeling you would like this place.”

The blue carpet, the bookshelves stacked miles high... “It feels like home. ...What? What is it?” He nudges Byleth’s leg with his foot when Byleth ducks his head down.

“Ravenclaw suits you,” he says simply with a fondness in his eyes.

On the other side of the rounded mahogany table, Hilda hands a stack of Monopoly bills begrudgingly to Leonie, who takes them and smugly adds them to her growing stack.

“Your turn, Claude.”

By the windows, Ignatz is turned away from their group, focused on painting the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw. Beside him, Lorenz fiddles with the phone connected to the speakers hanging up on the ceiling, messing with whoever’s playlist is currently blasting Kero Kero Bonito’s ‘Flamingo.’

Raphael’s booming laugh almost masks the chime outside as the eagle knocker provides a riddle. The answer from the student is muted, but Linhardt hears the click and shift of the door opening and Lysithea enters, balancing a stack of boxes in her hands. The students in the room take notice and immediately abandon their activities to swarm the table where Lysithea places the boxes.

“Get in line,” Sothis mutters, elbowing one of the students in the stomach.

It’s easy for Linhardt to turn around, open one of the boxes and get pizza for him and Byleth. They watch the line shorten as they eat, hands coated in crumbs afterward. They wind up getting roped into a game of Exploding Snap by Flayn, and the sun sets without Linhardt ever having touched his books at all, watching Byleth as one of his cards explodes in his face.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s that time of the year where Claude tries to inject coffee into his bloodstream, Hilda blasts her trumpet from the top of the Gryffindor tower (arguably the tallest tower in the castle thanks to a 10-inch ruler, tape, a sticking charm and a thick layer of ego) and Lysithea and Raphael can be found in the kitchen if they’re not studying. Flayn is holed up in the Room of Requirement, playing on CoolMathGames, accompanied by Ignatz playing Club Penguin.

And Byleth is in Linhardt’s room, trying to read through his Defence Against the Dark Arts textbook. Keyword: trying. He’s been reading the same sentence for the last three minutes, because he’s in Linhardt’s room. And Linhardt’s here. _Aaaaand_ so are Linhardt’s friends, by association.

“Can’t you all go do this in a different room?” Linhardt says, exasperated.

From his place on the floor, Caspar says, “Dunno what you’re talking about,” before leaning forward to catch a grape thrown at him by Dorothea in his mouth. “We’re just chilling.”

“You’re playing Uno in my room. There are plenty of other rooms.”

Petra looks up, a crease between her brows. “Caspar said we needed to watch you two in case you got up to any ‘funny business’.”

“What ‘funny business’?” With their thighs touching on the bed, Byleth feels Linhardt twitch against him.

Dorothea bats her eyelashes. “Oh, you know...whatever two people can get up to, alone in a room.”

“Sleep?” Byleth says.

“Yes, definitely. And on that note, I’m kicking you all out.” Linhardt pushes them all out the door, even with their half-hearted protests. “Yes, yes, we will be safe, nothing to worry about, certainly not thatー” He slams the door shut behind him and sighs. Their footsteps retreat further down, and Byleth hears them knocking on a different room, a meek voice answering.

“Sorry about that. They’reー” Linhardt waves his hand.

“It’s alright. I’m just sorry we ended up having to use your room to study.” The library and all the common rooms are always filled this time of the month, and Byleth didn’t feel like studying in the Great Hall, where there are as many students studying as there are who aren’t.

“It’s fine, though I doubt I’ll manage to get any studying done.”

“Because of the ‘funny business’?”

Byleth feels Linhardt’s sigh all the way to his bones as he lies down on his bed, legs still on the ground. An eye flutters open to study Byleth.

“Not that, but it’s much easier for me to sleep like this.”

“How can you stay awake, then?”

Even Linhardt’s shrug manages to look sluggish. Byleth thinks that if given the option, the boy would never move at any point in time again.

“Tell me how to get on Professor Gilbert’s good side,” Linhardt murmurs, rubbing his face into his pillow. The sunlight from the small, square window lands on the blanket, shape morphing slightly with the dip of their bodies weighing on the bed. It’s the same blanket Linhardt had with him the first night, wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

_What are you running from?_

The fish scatter again, and Byleth finds he’s been staring too long.

“You’ll need to start attending his classes, for one.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Exams begin, and Byleth learns exactly why they’re called Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Testsーbecause they’re just that. Each one leaves him drained, and every morning he wakes and nurses his cup of tea and tells himself that there can only be so much life throws at him before it has to stop. Life has limits, right?

He still doesn’t know what he wants to do once he graduates. That used to scare him once, in a way the ocean could be scary for simply being what it was: unknown. It’s easier to not think about it, easier to have someone else decide.

Running away is easy.

But Byleth doesn’t feel like running away anymore.

Lately when he thinks of his future, he imagines summertime spun golden, the unattainable dream of catching the wind in his hands. And a person.

Byleth is trying to figure out when his visions of the future included Linhardt, and why he isn’t bothered by it.

There is something he’s missing that everyone else seems to know, a not-secret that flits out of Byleth’s sight when he tries to think about it. Sothis’ question, Jeralt’s knowing eyes, Dorothea batting her eyelashes in faux innocence.

So when the last of the exams are over and he’s about to turn in for the night and an origami crane floats into the empty common room, all Byleth can think is, _finally_ , even while the thought makes no sense to him, it settles like something meant to be.

In Linhardt’s messy scribble that’s become as familiar Byleth’s own it says, _Meet me in two days at the lake at dawn._

The words should be comforting. They are, at first.

And then Byleth remembers that tomorrow is the day of the final task of the Triwizard Tournament.

It seems life has one more thing to throw his way.

(As he sets the letter on his bedside table, Byleth decides, _make that two._ )

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The afternoon heat leaves the crowd restless and shuffling. Ashe casts a cooling charm over them, and Linhardt thanks him.

“They must’ve cast an _engorgio_ charm or something like it to make the Quidditch pitch bigger on the inside,” Linhardt says, thinking of how Ministry cars look Muggle-sized but are spelled to comfortably fit eight people in one row. From the outside, the hedges of the maze already tower over them.

Caspar points down as the crowd rises like a wave. “There they are!”

The Triwizard Tournament Champions arrive to stand before the maze. Above them, the floating television screens flicker on, tiny cameras hovering over each Champion’s shoulder.

Professor Alois announces the final trial to the spectators as Linhardt blinks the sun out of his eyes. Ashe puts a dollop of sunscreen on his nose with a smile, to _protect his skin from the sun._ Linhardt’s never bothered to use the Muggle invention before. Caspar puts on a sunhat that tilts sideways from his cursed haircut.

Alois’ voice booms as the Champions enter the maze. Byleth turns to the crowd one last time, hesitant, and Linhardt remembers the letter he sent the night before, hazy and tired and ready to give in and thinking of a _leap of faith._

The Champions enter as one, the maze swallowing them in a world of green and black. When they leave, only one will be the victor.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


It’s a lot of walking. Byleth wishes he had his broom to travel faster, but as it is, he’s left to stumble over roots and mumbling _point me_ and casting _lumos_ about the eerie silence of the hedges.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, the hedges too far over his head to see the sun or sky. His only companion is the fluttering camera that watched him sneak past a griffin, run from a giant spider, and got spooked when the hedges rustled suspiciously only to reveal nothing.

When he sees a sphinx lying in the middle of the path he immediately spins around to find a different path, because he’s absolute rubbish when it comes to riddles (as is proven every time the eagle begrudgingly allows him to enter the Ravenclaw common room even if he doesn’t know the answer).

The sounds of fighting reach him before he enters the clearing.

Peering from behind a hedge, he sees Edelgard send a spell Dimitri’s way; his hands move mesmerizingly in an impossible movement as he _catches_ the spell with his hands, and Byleth understands just how much control Dimitri needs to cast wandless magic.

Dimitri redirects the spell back to Edelgard like a waterbender and, honestly, Byleth’s just trying to make it out of here alive, okay? School’s hard enough without having to fight in wizard duels.

Edelgard blocks her own spell with a shield and shoots another spell at Dimitri. Neither of them have noticed Byleth yet, and between them a few feet away is the Triwizard Tournament trophy, sitting innocently on a stand. Byleth contemplates joining in on the duel - he thinks if he and Edelgard worked together to overpower Dimitri they would be able to defeat him - but a voice that sounds suspiciously like Linhardt suggests, _you should just relax while they fight._

As it is, Edelgard and Dimitri are on par with each other in terms of strength. If anyone were here in Byleth’s place they would work out what to do. Claude would surely have some scheme already planned, Leonie would be steadfast no matter her decision.

_One at a time._ That’s how Byleth deals with his problems.

(Tries to.)

Byleth throws himself out in the open and stupefies Dimitri. He stumbles and turns - _shouldn’t that have done it?_ \- the look in his eyes icing over.

Edelgard sends another spell Dimitri blocks, and Byleth dives sideways. The ground he was standing on smokes ominously from the spell Dimitri shot his way.

Edelgard shoots two more spells in succession and Dimitri wavers, form rippling where he stands.

_“Stupefy,”_ Edelgard says, and the red from her spell casts her in a devilish light, before the world descends into shadow once more.

Even in the darkness, Byleth sees Dimitri wobble. His collapse to the ground is that of a great oak tree being cut, severed from the trunk.

Edelgard wastes no time in shooting a spell at Byleth that he rolls to avoid. He scrambles up, blocks another spell.

Between the brief flashes of light, Edelgard looks as harried as Byleth, sweaty and clothes a little torn. Her face is tight with concentration, victory a mere few inches away.

Byleth sends two spells in rapid succession, one behind the other: _“Stupefy,”_ and silently, in his head, _anaticula._

She blocks the first one with ease. The second one she doesn’t see. It hits her dead-on, and she staggers at the force of it, but nothing happens.

Edelgard scrunches up her nose and waves her wand. A live duck pops out with a _quack_ and a flurry of feathers.

“Whatー”

_“Expelliarmus,”_ Byleth says anticlimactically, and Edelgard’s wand soars out of her hand into the air. With a Seeker’s reflex, he snatches it and points his wand at her.

Edelgard raises her hands. “I surrender,” she says. The three cameras fly about the area, capturing the moment.

“Right,” Byleth says. He looks at Dimitri, lying still on the ground. “How many times did we stupefy him?”

She purses her lips. “Four?”

What the hell do they feed the Beauxbatons students?

“The trophy’s supposed to be a portkey back to the beginning of the maze,” Byleth says, returning Edelgard’s wand. “Help me hold him up, and we can all go back.”

With Dimitri held between them, the two wizards grab hold of the trophy, warping them back to the start of the maze and signalling the end of the Triwizard Tournament.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The celebrations don’t stop until Professor Seteth himself clambers into the Hufflepuff common room and declares that they all go to bed now, despite the fact that there aren’t anymore classes and nothing can stop them.

In the morning, Byleth almost forgets the letter until he sits it with a jolt when he brushes apart his curtains.

(He didn’t forget. Who is he kidding?)

The grass is untouched with morning dew when he steps out of the castle. The muted glow of a growing sunrise lines the horizon as he makes his way forward silently, even as something whispers in him to _run_.

He doesn’t think he can run from Linhardt.

He hears him before he sees him, the steady creaking of wood, repetitive in its motions. Down the hill by the lake, Linhardt stands on the swing, going back and forth like a pendulum. The wind blows through Byleth’s hair as he makes his way to him, the shuffle of shoes through grass.

Linhardt doesn’t look at him at first, head tilted up to the deep indigo sky, eyes closed. The rise of the sun lights half his face in a rosy tint that shifts as he movesーone moment he’s in shades of cool blue, the next in a pale pink. He looks like he’s just woken up, hair undone and tangled, hasn’t bothered to change out of his pyjamasーbut of course, Byleth thinks ruefully, Linhardt will take any opportunity to wear his pyjamas.

Linhardt exhales wispy fog when he finally opens his eyes to look down at him. There’s always been something magnetic about his gaze, like he’s seeing both all and none of Byleth. It’s all-encompassing and more than a little disorienting, but somehow with all the time they spent together, Byleth’s gotten used to it.

“I was sure you’d forget about this,” Linhardt says. “Congratulations, by the way.”

With all the festivities after the final task, they never managed to talk for a moment, much less catch a glimpse of each other.

“Thanks,” he says, “I don’t think there would be any way for me to forget about this.” _I don’t think there would be any way for me to forget about you._

“What are you thinking of spending the prize money on?”

Actually, Byleth forgot that existed.

“I don’t know,” he admits, then, cautiously, “Is that all you called me outside for?”

Linhardt’s eyes sweep over him. “What did you think I was calling you outside for?”

“Somethingーimportant.”

“I think one thousand galleons is pretty important, don’t you think?” Linhardt looks up to the ever-changing sky. “Think about how much you could _do_ with that money. You could donate it to a charity. Use it to buy your own house, get a headstart after graduation. Go on vacationー”

“Or,” Byleth says quietly, the idea rising unbidden. It’s funny how easily everything falls into place, the final puzzle piece in an overarching picture. “I could open up a shop for wand-making.”

Linhardt’s head whips to face him. His eyes have an undeniable hunger in them, but there’s also confusion andーsomething else he can’t quite put a finger on. “What interests do _you_ have in wand-making?”

“Nothing. But I know a certain wizard who’s been wanting to make their own shop, and they’re graduating pretty soon.” Byleth waits as Linhardt swings back and forth, back and forth, pink to blue then back again, three times, before trying, “Why did you send me that note, Linhardt? What did you want to tell me?”

Linhardt stares back at him, and Byleth feels like he should know. He should _know_ this, deep in his heart that doesn’t skip a beat so much as trips over itself in its haste to keep double-time.

Linhardt’s face takes on a determined expression. “I’ll tell you, but you can’t run from this.”

“I won’t.” _I won’t run from you._

“Good,” Linhardt says, and only a double-beat of Byleth’s heart passes as Linhardt launches himself off the swing into Byleth’s arms, hair rippling like a white flag.

Linhardt smells like parchment and ink and dusty classrooms with sunlight filtering through.

Byleth lands on his back in the grass, Linhardt leaning over him, hair falling in front of his face and on Byleth’s. Byleth tries to remember how to breathe, how to move as Linhardt exhales heavily. Linhardt’s hand presses warm against his thrumming heartbeat as he lifts himself with his other hand next to Byleth’s neck.

“Will you run now?”

Byleth focuses on the movement of Linhardt’s lips, connects them to sound and words and sentences and manages, unhelpfully, “I don’t think I can run when you have me pinned down.”

Linhardt laughs, breath warm on Byleth’s face. “Right.” He leans down until their foreheads almost touch until he stops, almost like he’s waiting. Byleth doesn’t know what he’s waiting for as he analyzes the soft curve of his mouth, the flickering shadows cast by his eyelashes as he blinks.

He reaches forward still to thread a hand through Linhardt’s hair to push it behind his ear, and he hears the breath catch in Linhardt’s throat, soft and half a gasp. Linhardt’s ears are warm, and Byleth’s fingers tingle as he trails them to the back of Linhardt’s neck where the goosebumps settle.

“I,” Byleth tries to find the words of what he wants, this feeling inside of him that never completely goes away when he’s with Linhardt. It’s not the kind of feeling that comes with victory; it’s not heightened emotions of joy or the roars of the crowd. It’s butterbeer light on his tongue, a quiet kind of realization, the opening of eyes upon waking and the steady warmth of sunlight.

Linhardt rolls his eyes. “My arm is too tired to wait.” He runs a hand through Byleth’s hair that makes him jolt.

“I,” Byleth says, not really aware of what he’s saying as Linhardt follows the curve of his jaw from his ear to the tip of his chin, tilting his head up ever so slightly with a small, exasperated smile that sends the fish in Byleth’s metaphorical lake scattering to the high winds. “I...”

“Yes, you,” Linhardt murmurs, and Byleth’s suddenly aware of thee press of another warmth, Linhardt’s body slotting into his with an unknown familiarity that aches.

“Can I kiss you?” he blurts, and Linhardt sighs and mutters something that sounds like, _finally_ , before lips press against his, and Byleth forgets what words are.

Linhardt kisses slow and lazy like they’ve done this a million times before and Byleth almost laughs against him, but Linhardt makes a noise of protest. So Byleth struggles to keep a smile off his face as he pulls Linhardt closer, feeling the sunlight in his hair, the warmth on the back of his neck.

Linhardt’s kisses are what happiness tastes like, and Byleth sighs as he thinks, drunk on the feeling, _finally, finally,_ finally.

When they finally pull away (because air is a necessity required to survive, and as much as Byleth hates it, if he can continue kissing Linhardt he’ll do whatever it takes to stay alive) it feels like both an eternity and a moment has passed.

“Wait,” Byleth says, pulling Linhardt back before he rolls off. “Are you sure?”

Linhardt’s brows furrow. “Sure about what?”

“Sure about...” He gulps, Linhardt following the motion with his eyes. “Me.” Because if there’s one thing he’s scared about all of this, it’sー “Am I enough? Or will you leave when you get bored?” _When you know all of me, from my flaws to my secrets, will you leave me then?_

Linhardt caresses his cheek, realization filling his eyes. But his eyes are soft when he says, “I don’t think I could ever tire of you, Byleth.”

“Oh,” Byleth says eloquently, and the look on his face makes Linhardt laugh and press their foreheads together. “How long have youーfor me?” It’s still a lot to take in, the fact that he likes Linhardt, the fact that Linhardt likes him back. The fact that these are facts.

“I don’t know,” Linhardt says. “Love has a way of creeping up on you, don’t you think?”

Byleth hums in agreement, and Linhardt captures his lips in one more kiss before he rolls off, stretching in the grass.

“What now?”

Linhardt props his head up to face him, an unfamiliar glint in his eyes that Byleth can’t quite place. “It’s not like they can expel us at this point, can they?”

“No,” Byleth admits slowly.

He realizes that Linhardt’s smile looks too much like Flayn’s in that moment. “I have an idea.”

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“This is a terrible idea,” Flayn says cheerfully. “But since it’s all ready, I’m just going to sit back and watch what happens.”

Linhardt quietly agrees with her as he sits back in his seat. This may be his idea, but he refuses to include himself in the actual action part of his plan. No, he prefers to sit back and watch the chaos for this one.

“I think this is the first time something like this has ever happened in history,” Ignatz says, and for once he doesn’t have any of his usual painting supplies with him, though he is clutching a sketchbook tightly.

On the other side of Linhardt, Mercedes pats Marianne on the head with a serene smile. “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine. What’s the most that could happen? A broken arm, two concussions, a death?”

“Not my problem,” Linhardt yawns. Sometimes, he just wants to see the world go to shit.

The world in this case being a certain Quidditch pitch that’s been freed of plant growth and now has three sets of goalposts instead of the usual two in a regular match.

On the ground, three teams ready for liftoff, dressed in blue, red, and yellow. Two quaffles are thrown in the air, and the worst unofficial match in Quidditch history begins.

It’s literal chaos from the get-go. Players zip up and down the pitch in blurs. The pitch isn’t even made for three teams, and the extra set of goalposts they placed are in the centre of the field on the other side of where their small audience sits. Flayn - who Linhardt learned from Byleth is the usual commentator for Hogwarts’ Quidditch matches - doesn’t even bother to try and do a play-by-playーthere’s too much going on to even try.

Linhardt bites into a sweet bun, relishes the feeling of the sun and wind warm on his face and thinks about taking a nap later, maybe with Byleth if he agrees.

Byleth now is just a yellow dot on the field, and Linhardt pulls out the binoculars he borrowed from Petra to have a close-up of his face, far too concentrated on finding the golden snitch to react to Leonie zooming past with the quaffle with Ferdinand on her tail. He’s in his element, Linhardt thinks.

“There’s no way this can end well,” Lorenz says.

“You’re not wrong,” Ignatz mutters.

Eventually, the match ends when Petra and Sylvain - the seekers for their respective teams - smack into each other in their haste to seize the golden snitch, and above them Byleth reaches for it, eyes glittering melted sapphire, and Linhardt remembers the latest Quidditch Cup in the trophy room of Hogwarts, engraved with the Hufflepuff players’ names.

Professor Seteth is waiting for the players on the ground when they land, looking like he’s been sucking on a sour lemon for the past hour, which is his usual expression, so Linhardt doesn’t think they have to worry about expulsion or anything of the sort.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Byleth knocks softly on the door before he enters. Linhardt’s lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. His suitcase is open, but everything is still strewn about the room.

“Aren’t you leaving today?”

Linhardt blinks away the sunlight in his eyes and shifts sideways so Byleth can take a seat beside him. “It’s not like we’re leaving the ship, so I don’t have to pack yet.” The rustling caused by Byleth makes him look up. “What’s that?”

“Yearbooks.” The yearbook club is the only club that begins somewhere in early May, and it was the only club that was allowed to function as per usual this year, even with the Triwizard Tournament. “There are some pictures of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, so we decided to give you guys this. This one’s yours.”

Linhardt takes the yearbook to flip it open. Headmistress Rhea’s introduction is the first page with a yearly review and lookback to past events, then table of contents, followed by class, settled by house and year, and pictures of the Triwizard Tournament, from the trials to the Yule Ball. There’s a few pictures of the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students scattered throughout - Ashe whipping a snowball into Lorenz’s face gleefully, Caspar and Raphael feeding Sally, Flayn and Annette in the kitchen. There’s a few pictures of Linhardt, too. His face blinks back at them, hair a mess and clothes dishevelled, and Byleth remembers him looking like that during the week of exams. There’s another picture of him in the Hufflepuff common rooms, dozing on Byleth’s shoulder.

“You’re blushing,” Linhardt says, tapping on the picture.

Byleth flushes but puts his hand on Linhardt’s.

“Who took the pictures? I don’t remember anyone taking these.”

“I think it was Hilda,” Byleth says. “Anyway, look at this.” He flips to the back of the yearbook, where a large amount of written notes to Linhardt greet them.

Linhardt traces the notes, all from Byleth’s friends, from single-sentenced farewells to paragraph-length entries.

A certain note in the corner catches Linhardt’s attention.

“I asked, and she agreed,” Byleth says, leaning his head on Linhardt’s shoulder to catch pieces of what Marianne’s written - _Applewood and phoenix feather, slightly springyー_

Linhardt squeezes his hand, and Byleth relishes in the warmth for a moment before pulling away, reaching back into the bag. “There was something I wanted to give you before you left.”

Linhardt stares at the blue-gray feather Byleth places in his palms.

“I know quills are a little out of date,” Byleth says awkwardly. “But I thought, since we wouldn’t see each other for a bit...”

“No, this is fine. More than fine,” Linhardt says, trailing a hand through the soft feather. “Actually, while you’re still here, I got an ideaー” He rushes outside. Byleth blinks. He didn’t think it was possible for Linhardt to move that fast.

He comes back with a necklace and scissors after knocking on what Byleth assumed was Dorothea’s door from the voice that greeted him.

“Uh...what are youー” Linhardt snips off a bit of his hair, and Byleth stares.

Linhardt fumbles for the locket at the end of the silver-chained necklace and places it inside with a crisp _snap_ and holds it out to Byleth.

“Now we have a bit of each other with us always.”

Wordlessly, Byleth takes it. Linhardt’s the one who reaches over, fingers brushing the nape of his neck as he attaches the necklace around Byleth’s neck.

When Linhardt moves back to face him, Byleth pulls him forward and smiles into the kiss.

The future is still a scary prospect, and maybe it always will be. But with Linhardt beside him, Byleth feels he can brave that first step and follow his friends onwards and upwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We got [fanart](https://twitter.com/aegisunmerge/status/1232082900163743746?s=20)!


	5. epilogue: they were sharing the brain cell the whole time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Magical tattoos? Magical tattoos.

Linhardt rises unwillingly with his sun.

“Five more minutes,” Linhardt grumbles, his grip on Byleth tightening. Seven years have come and gone but he still hates mornings, Byleth thinks fondly as he brushes Linhardt’s hair out of his face, Linhardt’s nose wrinkling at his touch.

“I’m gonna make breakfast,” Byleth says in the quietest voice he can muster, because mornings are not made for anything louder than that, especially with Linhardt.

Linhardt narrows his eyes, the intense effect lowered by the haze in them, still caught in the stirrings of a dream. The shadow of a bird travels leisurely with a slow flap of its wings, appearing from underneath his jaw to cross the canyon of his cheekbones to the ridge of his nose, where it turns with a glide to travel further up his head and disappears, and Byleth knows it will eventually return to rest over Linhardt’s pulse on his neck, where the tattoo of the falcon was first placed.

Linhardt mumbles something incoherent before he reaches out, slow, like he’s moving through water, to catch Byleth’s wrist and brings it to his face. His kiss warms the inside of his wrist and Byleth flushes as Linhardt’s thumb measures his pulse, tracing the lines of the compass tattooed near it.

Linhardt drops his hand to retreat into the comfort of their bedsheets and Byleth smiles. He reaches out only to run a hand through Linhardt’s hair once more, the arrow of the compass shifting to point to Linhardt, because it was charmed to always point to home.

The second floor of their shop is dedicated to their home, and Byleth opens the windows to let in the morning breeze that makes the curtains flutter, and Byleth thinks of the flight he’ll be taking later on in the day. The town below hasn’t woken, cobblestone sidewalks empty.

Byleth gets to work in the kitchen, making the usual and preparing Linhardt’s tea, checking his phone for notifications - his father wants to see him and Sothis after her Quidditch team’s latest victory, and Claude is appearing on the news againーsomething to do with the most recent Ministry law changes about Azkaban.

The scent of breakfast doesn’t have Linhardt crawling out of bedーit never does, so Byleth sets the meal on their bedside table and sits down to shake his shoulder gently, kissing between the curve of his neck to his collarbone. Linhardt turns over to blink at him blearily, apparently having fallen asleep again.

Linhardt sits up to lean against Byleth. Familiar with this routine and Linhardt’s laziness, Byleth slices a part of the pancake to feed to him, waiting as Linhardt slowly chews through each bite to give him another slice. His weight is a warm comfort on Byleth’s side.

“What can I do,” Linhardt says, once he finishes the pancakes, “to have you do this for me every morning?”

Byleth smiles. He already does this for Linhardt whenever he can - which is a lot - but to be with Linhardt for the rest of his life...

“Marry me?” he tries, voice too scratchy and solemn to be a joke. He feels for a moment, like he’s seventeen again, emotions scattered in a lake because of a boy who looked at Byleth with all-encompassing eyes and understood and decided that he, too, felt the same as Byleth did for him.

Linhardt narrows his eyes. “You’re kidding,” he says, without a hint of humour in his voice, looking more awake than he did a mere few seconds ago.

Byleth reaches down to feel under the bedside table to grab a velvet box, his heart caught in his throat. The ring he presents to Linhardt is the one his father gave him which was his mother’s ring, catching in the sunlight and reflecting in Linhardt’s wide eyes.

“Is this too sudden?” Byleth asks when Linhardt doesn’t reply, only blinks slowly at the ring like he’s doing mathematical loops in his mind.

“Yes,” Linhardt says sharply, offended. “You couldn’t wait until Thursday?”

“What?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sakeー” Linhardt yanks his wand out from the bedside table and waves it with a harsh movement that’s unlike him. A moment later, something small and cubed soars into his waiting hand, and Linhardt opens it for Byleth to stare at.

“It’s a ring,” Byleth says, his mind trying to connect Linhardt’s embarrassed and angry expression to the ring sitting snugly inside the box, shining innocently and sending shades of green bouncing around the room.

“I reserved a night at that restaurant you like so much for this,” Linhardt says, and Byleth remembers the plans they had arranged for Thursday. “What am I going to do now?”

“We can still go there, you just don’t be proposing to me. Because you just did.”

Linhardt buries his head in his hands and groans as Byleth bites back a smile. Linhardt didn’t have to go so far as to plan for this, but he did, and it makes Byleth’s heart burn in a good way, like the first cold inhale of morning air, or the way you burn after a good run.

He tugs at Linhardt’s wrists gently. “Let me put the ring on you.”

The ring is beautiful on Linhardt’s hand, and Byleth’s struck by the fact that he’ll be spending the rest of his life with this man. The rest of his life trying recipes while avoiding burning the kitchen, taste-testing Linhardt’s sweets, the rest of his life carrying Linhardt away from his worktable and up to _their_ bed when he gets too tired to walk the way there, the rest of his life with Linhardt washing his hair, cleaning the dishes together, walking down streets at night to get some air and see the sky open above them to remind them that life is larger than their worriesー

The ring fits on Byleth’s finger perfectly. Linhardt brings a hand up to brush away something warm and liquid on Byleth’s face, and he takes in a shuddering breath to realizeー

“You’re crying,” Linhardt says, too surprised at the sight to worry, eyes filled with wonder, and Byleth realizes this is the first time he’s cried in front of Linhardt. And maybe, now that he thinks about it, the first time that he’s cried in his life.

“I love you,” Byleth says, and Linhardt flushes but his smile is gentle, accepting as he moves his hand to cradle Byleth’s chin.

They meet in the middle to kiss once, then again, then once more, tangled in each other until Linhardt laughs softly and Byleth’s smile is all teeth so they pull away to catch their breath, basking in each other’s presence.

Until the ring of the alarm disturbs them from their moment, and they realize that’s their ten-minute warning until they open shop.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do we _have_ to hold a wedding?”

“What’s wrong with a wedding?”

“Nothing. It’s just expensive and time-consuming - deciding who will be invited, writing the invitations, deciding the theme of the wedding, the flowers, the food, checking for which invitee has what allergies, which venue we’ll be holding the wedding at, what time, the season which ties into the clothes, what to wear, what time, writing our vowsー”

“You’ve given this a lot of thought, haven’t you?”

“The daydreams mostly consisted of you in a suit, but the more practical problems become obvious once you actually get toーwell, _here_.”

“You daydream of me in a suit?”

“I also imagine you _without_ the suit, Byleth, I’m not exactly picky. After all, I chose you even with your terrible dye job.”

“I didn’t ask for this hair.”

“No, but you’re living with it. And so have I by consequently being with you, if we’re being honest.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cool, it's done. If you want to see more of my writing I have a twitter thread of the next byhardt/linleth/bylin (can we pls vote on a ship name?) fic I'm planning on writing here: https://twitter.com/phaedinphaedout/status/1218025341215748097?s=20
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> \- A google doc of the students’s wands with wand types, cores, size, flexibility (with links to the pottermore site inside): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GaT5EEumKx1NzP6Zlr6jLP5Z0OKDh03aIswFaaAbO9s/edit?usp=sharing
> 
> \- Gryffindors: Raphael, Leonie, Lorenz  
> \- Hufflepuffs: Sothis, Byleth, Marianne  
> \- Ravenclaws: Flayn, Ignatz  
> \- Slytherins: Claude, Hilda, Lysithea
> 
> \- Caspar starred in this chapter as the voice of reason, which goes to show Linhardt’s a dumbass


End file.
